One of the little extras that always gets a mention from my B&B guests in reviews is the whole cake waiting in their room on arrival. This is normally a homemade lemon drizzle cake. It's a fairly safe bet as it seems to be most people's favourite! However I also offer to make something different on request ( and at extra cost - the lemon drizzle is free )

One of those I offer is a sticky ginger cake with butter icing. I'm glad I'm not asked to make this that often because it is one of my favourites, and I would end up eating far too much of it! 

My favourite butter icing has a teaspoon of vanilla extract in it. Since my homemade vanilla extract is just rum with vanilla pods steeped in it, I decided to switch it for a teaspoon of ginger wine and it works very well.

I've written this recipe using imperial measures as it's so easy to remember that way. It's easily halved if you don't want to make 3 cakes.

I bake it in 3 x 1lb loaf tins, lined with loaf liners. This means I have 1 cake for the guest room and the others I put in bags, seal and put in the freezer for up to a month. The cake keeps well and gets stickier over a few days.

The icing is enough to generously cover 1 cake. 

I sometimes fold a bit of preserved stem ginger into the cake. This is great if you don't want to use the ginger wine, as you can use the syrup from the jar instead of the wine in the butter icing.

If you want to make it extra decadent, use a skewer to piece holes over the cake once it's out the oven and drizzle some ginger wine over ( or ginger syrup if using )

Because of the stickiness of this cake, it also works well with gluten free flour. Replace the self raising flour with gluten free and add a couple more tablespoons of milk as the gluten free flour absorbs more moisture than normal flour.

Cake Ingredients

• 8oz treacle
• 8oz golden syrup
• 8oz dark muscovado sugar
• 8oz butter
• 16oz white self raising flour
• 4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon of mixed spice
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 pint milk

Icing Ingredients ( for one cake )

• 2 oz very soft butter
• 7 oz icing sugar
• 1tsp ginger wine ( or ginger syrup / milk )

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius Fan oven, 170 degrees Celsius non fan.

Put the flour, ginger and mixed spice in a large bowl and mix well.

Put the treacle, syrup, sugar and butter in a large saucepan and heat gently until it all melts. Mix it well together.

Beat together the eggs and milk.

Pour the contents of the saucepan and then the eggs & milk into the flour and spices and beat well till it's all well combined.

Divide the mixture between the 3 loaf tins and baked for about 40 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

Leave to cool completely then make the icing by beating together the butter, sugar and ginger wine. Spread it over one cooled cake.