Wholemeal Ginger Traybake

Sometimes you just want cake. Not oaty cake or fruity cake. Not biscuits or tarts. CAKE. This is a recipe for one of those days. I’m a massive fan of the traybake because they feed a lot of people and are generally a doddle to do. Also if you don’t have a traybake tin you can easily use a roasting tin instead. This recipe is one from my Mary Berry book which has loads of ginger cake recipes, but I chose the ‘wholemeal’ one so I could tell my mum that it’s good for you. We all know that’s bollocks so if you can’t be bothered with the wholemeal bit just replace it with normal self-raising flour.

Ingredients

175g butter

350g golden syrup

120g granulated sugar

1 ½ tbsp orange marmalade

200ml milk

175g self-raising flour

1 ½ tsp ground ginger

1 ½ tsp ground mixed spice

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

175g wholemeal self-raising flour

3 large eggs, beaten

For icing

3 tbsp lemon juice

225g icing sugar

Crystallised ginger to decorate

Preheat the oven to 160⁰C/gas mark 3. Butter and line a 30 x 23 cm traybake tin with baking parchment.

On a low heat melt the butter, syrup, sugar, marmalade and milk in a saucepan until the sugar has completely dissolved. Leave it on the side to cool for a bit.

In a large mixing bowl sift the self-raising flour with the ginger, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda. Add the wholemeal flour and stir all the dry ingredients together.

Pour in the melted butter and syrup mixture into the dry ingredients with the beaten eggs. Combine well with a wooden spoon to make a smooth batter. Pour into the tin and bake in the oven for around 1 ½ hours or until it is golden brown and springy in the middle. Allow the cake to cool for a few minutes in the tin before transferring to a wire rack.

You can see from the pictures that my icing is a bit sloppy. This is 100% down to my complete and utter laziness- I just couldn’t be bothered to weigh out the icing sugar, so I just sort of added a random amount of lemon juice to a random bowl of icing. It still tastes lovely but I have to admit it looks a bit naff so I would advise maybe following the recipe… then just add some crystallised ginger to finish.

As it’s a horrible, rainy day that feels more like September than June I’m planning on having some of this for my tea with some hot custard. Laaaavely jubly.