I wanted to try and find another rum cake recipe as I wasn’t particularly happy with the previous one’s need for rum extract, so I thought I’d go down a sort of Dark and Stormy route and try a rum and ginger cake.
I plumped for the triple ginger and spice cake from BBC Good Food website. Having made a few cakes now I’m gaining a little more confidence in messing around with recipes, so I amended this one a little to add in some rum and change the sugar to get a more rum flavour.
Triple Ginger, Spice and Rum Cake
Ingredients
250g butter
250g dark brown muscovado sugar I used Billington’s Molasses Sugar
250g black treacle
150ml milk
150ml rum (I used Mount Gay)
2 eggs
100ml glacé ginger from a jar, finely chopped
375g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp allspice
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon (I added this as an extra)
Method: Combine the butter, treacle and sugar into a pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then stir in the milk and rum. The mixture needs to be cool to the touch and if this is the case then add in the eggs (if not leave a little longer). Chop the ginger and add the rest of the dry ingredients to a bowl, then add the wet mixture to make a batter. Bake for an 1 hour being careful not to open the oven as the cake will sink. Leave to cool.
As far as ginger cakes go this was was really yummy. It was very moist and left in an air-tight container lasted several days and was still good to eat. The rum certainly added to the flavour, but with the treacle and three types of ginger it was lost a little. The original recipe calls for some icing, but I didn’t bother as the cake is rich, moist and sticky enough without adding more sugar. Actually it would be really nice warm with some ice cream, cream or custard.
Getting hold of glace ginger was a little tricky though. I tried a few supermarkets and in the end the only place I found it was Sainsburys. I’m not sure I’d necessarily go to the hassle and might just use stem ginger as it was difficult to chop and left chunks in the cake.
This was definitely a good ginger cake and one to make again, but to get the rum flavour it needs some work – or accepting it as just a delicious ginger cake!