I’ve been baking again – so I figured I’d share it as the last cake went down well!

Yesterday I made a Mixed Nut and Ginger Cake with a dark chocolate topping, and today it has gone off to Shropshire Sailing Club for the Junior Squad end of year party. I don’t expect any to make it back home!

Ingredients:

• 200g Self-Raising Flour
• 200g Soft Light Brown Sugar
• 200g Margarine (or softened butter)
• 3 large Eggs
• 50g Mixed Nuts, chopped
• 5 or 6 chunks of Crystallised Ginger
• 1 heaped tsp Ground Ginger
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 150g Dark Chocolate

Method:

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C.

Put the flour, eggs, sugar, ground ginger, vanilla extract, and margarine into a mixing bowl.

If, like me, you have whole nuts, chop them up into smallish pieces and then do the same with the crystallised ginger chunks. Keep a small handfull of both to one side for sprinkling on the top of your cake later, and chuck the rest into your mixing bowl as well.

Beat until the mixture is light and smooth, then decant into a greased traybake tin.

Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until the cake is golden and springs back when gently touched/a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Set your cake aside to cool whilst you prepare the topping.

Melt the dark chocolate either in a bowl over a pan of hot water or, if you’re lazy like me, in the microwave. (Zap for 30 seconds and then stir, then stick it back in for 15 seconds, stir again, and repeat until it is all melted – don’t just bung it in for a minute all in one go, I’ve tried that before. It turns out chocolate can burn…)

Pour the chocolate onto your cake and smooth out with a pallette knife, before sprinkling over the chopped nuts and ginger you set aside earlier.

Leave everything to cool and BOOM! Cake!

The amount of ginger in this can very much be adjusted to taste, by adding more ground ginger or crystallised ginger to the mix (or both!) – I know some people find it over-powering whilst others can’t get enough. I went for a fairly gentle ginger hit as it was for an unknown audience!