Ginger spice cake

This makes a great cake at Christmas it is deliciously light and moist with wonderful festive spice flavours. I have been making this cake for a few years based on a recipe by David Lebovitz on The Guardian website. Sometimes I also add dates to the cake which also work well too.

So what do you need?

• 120g piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
• 200ml honey
• 200g brown sugar
• 250ml vegetable oil
• 350g plain flour
• 1½ tsp freshly ground cinnamon
• ½ – 1 tsp freshly ground cloves
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 250ml hot water
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• pinch of salt
• 2 large eggs

For the icing

• 400g icing sugar
• 8-10 cardamom pods

So what do you do?

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C / 350 F. I make this cake in a 25cm bunt tin which I grease and line the based with baking parchment.

Put the ginger in a food processor and blend until it is chopped finely, add the honey, sugar, oil and eggs and blend. Then add the water and blend again. Add the ground spices and salt and then sift the flour and add it in two or three batches mixing in between. You will have quite a runny cake batter which you can then pour into your cake tin and put it in the oven on a low / mid shelf. Cook for an hour, until it is firm and a skewer comes out clean. Check after  about 40 mins  if the cake looks like it will burn on top then cover with foil. Take the cake out of the oven and allow to to cool for about 10 mins before turning out of the tin. Cool on a wire rack.

At Christmas I like to ice the cake with a cardamom icing. I grind the seeds from about 8-10 cardamom pods and add this to 400g sifted icing sugar and add boiling water bit by bit to form a thick paste which I dollop on the top of the cake and allow to naturally run down the cake (if you icing is too watery it will all just run off the cake so make sure that the icing is a thick paste).