Sticky ginger lemon drizzle cake
Cooking time
Prep: 45 mins Cook: 50 mins - 1 hr Plus coolingSkill level
EasyServings
Cuts into 12 slicesAdapt one of our highest-rated cakes with tangy ginger, cream cheese frosting and citrus curd
Nutrition and extra info
Additional info
- Freeze un-iced sponge only
Nutrition per slice
- kcalories
- 541
- protein
- 5g
- carbs
- 71g
- fat
- 27g
- saturates
- 16g
- fibre
- 1g
- sugar
- 51g
- salt
- 1g
Ingredients
- 140g butter, cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing
- 300g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 4 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 140g dark muscovado sugar
- 140g black treacle
- 140g golden syrup
- 300ml whole milk
- 1 large egg
For the lemon drizzle
- zest and juice 1 lemon
- 50g granulated sugar
- 50g preserving sugar or crushed sugar cubes
For the lemon curd filling
- about ½ jar good lemon curd
- 2 balls stem ginger, diced
For the creamy icing
- 4 tbsp syrup from the stem ginger jar
- 100g soft cheese
- 200ml double cream
- 3 tbsp icing sugar, sieved
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Method
- Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Grease and line a deep 20cm round cake tin with baking parchment. Put the flour, bicarb and all the spices in a food processor, add the butter and whizz until it has disappeared, then tip into a mixing bowl (or rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs).
- Put the sugar, treacle, golden syrup and milk in a saucepan and heat, stirring gently, until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to just below boiling point.
- Pour the treacle mixture into the dry ingredients, stirring with a wooden spoon as you go. Beat in the egg until the mixture resembles a thick pancake batter. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50 mins-1 hr, until a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool completely in the tin.
- Split the cake through the middle. For the drizzle, stir the lemon zest and juice into the sugars, then immediately spoon all over the top half of the cake.
- For the filling, mix the lemon curd with the diced ginger. For the icing, beat together the ginger syrup, soft cheese, cream and icing sugar until thick enough to hold its shape. Spread the lemon curd filling all over the cut side of the bottom cake, dollop the creamy icing on top, then sandwich with the other half of the cake. The unfilled ginger cake will mature well for up to 3-4 days if wrapped well in baking parchment then foil.
Recipe from Good Food magazine, November 2012
Comments, questions and tips
Comments
I made this cake for my daughter's birthday and chose it for its keeping qualities, as I had to make it on Monday for my son-in-law to collect early on Tuesday. The birthday was on Thursday but half the cake was gone by Tuesday evening. She said it was 'possibly the most delicious birthday cake ever' and my son-in-law has just asked if I can make one for his birthday next week.
I simplified the recipe slightly by gently melting the butter with the treacle, syrup and sugar but NOT the milk. I beat the egg into the milk and added it at the end. No problems with separating or curdling this way. In two tins it took 35 mins. Oh, and I sandwiched them with a layer of lemon curd and a layer of cream cheese frosting. I had to use 2 lemons to get enough juice for the drizzle so I used the zest of both as well. I'm looking forward to trying a piece of the next one!
I too had terrible trouble with the treacle/milk/sugar mix. The first one split leaving huge lumps of protein from the milk in the mix. Binned that and redid it, but that split too!! I bake a lot and do not normally struggle with a recipe. The cake is in the oven at the moment. Lets hope it's worth all the drama!!
Just finished making this cake and it is perfection! It's so tasty and moist. I used two baking tins instead of splitting a large cake. I baked them at the temperature stated but for only 30 minutes. I also left out the cream filling and just used the lemon curd filling, still lovely! Will be making a heart shaped version for my other half for valentines day!
This cake is wonderful. I have now made it twice.
I too used two tins to avoid any cutting dramas.
I only used half the cream in the middle on the second one as the first one kept having land-slides and was difficult to transport to work without support!
Lemon cake and ginger cake are two of my favourites - to have them both together is bliss!
OMG!! wonderful cake. Easy to make, moist and really tasty. I made mine in one tin and didn't split it after, just put some lemon icing on top and it was fine. (I had no cream cheese) I think as it is so moist it can get away without the filling anyway. It would be lovely for Christmas as the spices give it that lovely Christmassy taste.
I would certainly recommend you try this one.
This cake went down a treat - I made 1.5 times the recipe, 1 batch split between two sandwich tins (took about 30 mins to cook) for my friend's birthday cake, with a cream cheese buttercream filling (skipped the cream from the recipe) and the half batch for one ginger loaf (this took about 50 mins as it was a bit thicker), which I just put the lemon drizzle on. Really tasty. Thought I had messed it up as the batter was really runny, but it all came together!
This cake was gorgeous. Made it for my daughters christening along with the ultimate chocolate cake. I made it in 2 tins as I knew my cutting skills wouldn't be good enough. I used mascarpone cheese for the filling and mixed lemon curd and stem ginger into it and left out the cream. I thought it had a parkin taste to it. Yummy.
Just made this cake for after a family Sunday dinner, went down very well indeed considering two of the people don't even like ginger! Making it in two sandwich tins definitely works better and I too used butter cream for the filling instead of cream cheese! I will definitely be making this again soon!
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Just made this cake for after a family Sunday dinner, went down very well indeed considering two of the people don't even like ginger! Making it in two sandwich tins definitely works better and I too used butter cream for the filling instead of cream cheese! I will definitely be making this again soon!
This is not an easy cake to make! It definitely needs separating into 2 tins wish I'd read the comments before hand!! We also had problems with the treacle and milk it completely separated so treat it gently with heat and use a wooden spoon! All in all very sticky very sweet and a complete mess when put together. I'm hoping it will taste better tomorrow a bit mellow. Fingers crossed.
Made this last week and it was very easy and absolutely gorgeous. I made it in two tins as I thought it might be difficult to cut with it being such a moist cake and put buttercream in the middle with the lemon curd as I couldn't use cream. Everybody who had some said how delicious it was. Hubby said it is his new fave will definitely make it again.