This week, Roy decided it was time to make something easy and delicious for afternoon tea. With Christmas approaching, he has been having lots of friends around and wanted something a little festive, but not too heavy to serve to them. He remembered a recipe for a date and ginger cake given to him by his Aunty Pam, and thought this sounded promising. When he made it, he, and his Grandpa were very impressed – it was delicious. So this week Roy Creates Date and Ginger Cake.
You Will Need:
- 125 grams of margarine
- 1 cup of pitted dates
- ¾ of a cup of sugar
- 125 grams of crystallized ginger. Roy actually used ‘Naked Ginger’ because he wanted to cut back a little on the sugar and it was still fantastic.
- 1 cup of water
- ¼ of a teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 1 and a ½ cups of self raising flour
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and line an 18 centimetre square cake tin with baking paper
- Chop up the dates and ginger and put them into a heavy based saucepan
- Add the margarine, sugar, water and salt to the saucepan and bring to the boil.
- Turn the heat down and simmer for 2 minutes
- Add the bicarbonate of soda and stir vigorously. The mix will bubble and froth like crazy
- Let the mix cool off (you can speed the process up by sitting the saucepan into a sink of cold water. Just make sure the water doesn’t flow into the saucepan!)
- Add ½ a cup of the flour and stir, then add the egg and mix it in.
- Add the rest of the flour and stir until it is well mixed.
- Pour into the cake tin
- Bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the cake comes out clean
- Cool, cut into squares and enjoy with coffee!