Squidgy Lemon-Ginger Cake

4.65 (42)
⏱ 120 mins 🍽 Cuts into 12 slices 🌶 british ✅ Easy 🏷 Snack

This rich and sticky British cake is a wonderful teatime treat. It combines dark muscovado sugar, fresh ginger, and lemon zest with chopped dates and Bramley apple for a moist, flavourful bake. Topped with a white chocolate drizzle and decorative candied peel, it's a cake that improves with time, keeping for a week or freezing well. It yields 12 satisfying slices.

Squidgy Lemon-Ginger Cake

Ingredients

  • 200g date stoned
  • 200g butter cut in pieces
  • 300g dark muscovado sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 50g fresh or frozen root ginger grated
  • 1 lemon grated zest
  • 200g self-raising flour
  • 1 Bramley apple (about 250g/9oz) peeled and chopped into pea-sized pieces
  • 50g white chocolate
  • 1 tbsp chopped candied lemon peel, to decorate
  • 1 tbsp sugar ‘coffee crystals’, to decorate

Method

  1. Set your oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3. Prepare a 20cm round, deep cake tin by buttering and lining it with baking parchment. Place the dates in a bowl and cover them with boiling water. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then stir in the sugar. Let this mixture cool a little.
  2. Beat the eggs, grated ginger, and lemon zest into the cooled butter mixture. Drain the dates, chop them finely, and add them to the pan, mixing thoroughly. Stir in the flour, followed by the chopped apple. Transfer the batter to the prepared tin, place the tin on a baking sheet, and bake for about 1¼ hrs until well risen. Test with a skewer. it should emerge with a few moist crumbs. Allow the cake to cool completely in its tin.
  3. Break the white chocolate into a microwave-safe bowl. Heat it in the microwave on a medium setting in one minute bursts until melted. Alternatively, melt it over a pan of simmering water. Take the cooled cake from the tin and remove the paper. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the top, then scatter with the chopped candied lemon peel and sugar ‘coffee crystals’. Leave the decoration to set before slicing. When wrapped well, the cake keeps for at least a week. For longer storage, wrap the undecorated, cooled cake in cling film and freeze for up to two months.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories376 kcal
Fat16 g
Saturates9 g
Carbs57 g
Sugars30 g
Fibre2 g
Protein4 g
Sodium212 mg

Recipe details

Skill levelEasy
CategorySnack
Cuisinebritish