Are you sick of food yet? No? Me either. I had a whole Terry’s Chocolate Orange for breakfast yesterday whilst watching The Life of Brian and it was quite possibly the best breakfast I’ve had all year. 🙂 Anyway, if you’re like me and your hunger for all things sweet knows no bounds (even at Christmas!) you’ll have eaten a fair bit of cake over the past week. I made this Gingerbread Cake in the week leading up to Christmas because I knew I’d be pushed for time to bake when the big day arrived (since I was hosting this year – but more on that later). It was the first time I’d ever made a cake ahead of time and frozen it, and d’you know what? I was pretty chuffed with how it turned out! So much so that I might freeze all my cakes in future. If you’re not a fan of the traditional Christmas iced fruit cake, then this is a sweet alternative.
Christmas Gingerbread Cake
Ingredients
- 100g Golden Syrup
- 100g Light Brown Sugar
- 175g Butter
- 3 Large Eggs
- 250ml of Milk
- 350g Self Raising Flour
- 3 tsp Ground Ginger
- 2 tsp Cinnamon
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- (Plenty of Buttercream and Sprigs of Rosemary to decorate)
Method
- Melt the syrup, sugar and butter in a pan until combined then set aside to cool.
- Beat together the eggs and milk.
- Beat the cooled syrup into the milk and eggs (make sure it’s cool enough else it’ll scramble your eggs!)
- Sift and fold in the flour, baking powder and spices.
- Pour the batter into a greased cake tin and bake at 180° for around 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
- If you’re freezing the cake wrap it tightly in cling film as soon as it’s hot enough to handle.
- Once completely cooled (or defrosted!) – slice the cake into three layers. Sandwich with buttercream and lightly cover the sides and top to create a “naked cake” style icing. Decorate with a crown of rosemary to finish 🙂
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