Recipes: Ginger Loaf Cake with Passionfruit Icing

This spiced ginger cake is deliciously rich, moist, sticky and a little bit chewy; thanks to the addition of the fiery crystallised ginger pieces. Yum! It’s the perfect afternoon tea cake - with all the lovely warm and deep flavours of ginger and nutmeg, paired with a sweet and tangy passionfruit glaze. The bold, fruity and tart flavour of passionfruit brilliantly balances the richness of the batter. We opted to use black treacle in this recipe, as this adds a real depth of flavour and creates that lush sticky exterior. This cake is super simple to make and improves/becomes more moist after a day or two of sitting. We highly recommend this cake for a cheeky little breakfast option with your morning coffee…it’s gooood.

Ingredients:

100g spelt flour

100g plain flour

2 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

120g golden syrup

150g black treacle

120g butter

90g dark brown sugar

2 eggs (room temperature)

100ml milk

40g roughly chopped crystallised ginger

Passionfruit Icing Glaze

3 ripe passionfruit (fresh pulp)

1 1/2 cup icing sugar

40g butter

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 170c

Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix spelt flour, plain flour, ground ginger, ground nutmeg and baking soda. Set aside.

In a sauce pan, add golden syrup, black treacle (aka molasses), butter and dark brown sugar and simmer over a low heat. Using a wooden spoon, keep stirring, until the ingredients have fully melted. Remove from the heat.

Pour the syrup mixture into the dry ingredients and using a hand held mixer (or spatula) start mixing or folding to make a batter.

In a separate small bowl using a fork mix the eggs with the milk until fully incorporated. Stir in to batter mixture. Mix until fully incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin.

Bake for roughly 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the tin for at least 30 minutes, and then lift the cake out to cool completely on a wire rack.

Whilst the cake is cooling, prepare your icing glaze…

Melt the butter in a sauce pan on low heat. Set aside to cool.

Using a knife, cut down the middle of two passionfruit. Scoop out the insides and add to a medium bowl. Set the remaining passionfruit aside for later.

Add the cooled melted butter into the bowl containing passionfruit, followed by the icing sugar. Using a handheld mixer, combine until the mixture comes together into a thick glaze. Pour glaze over the cake.

Scoop out the pulp from the remaining passionfruit and gently spread over the glaze.

Cut the loaf into slices and store in an air tight container. Consume within 10 days.