julia's double ginger cake with lemon cream cheese icing

julia's double ginger cake with lemon cream cheese icing

• 18 Sept 2022

I love Julia Busuttil Nishimura's recipes because they're simple to make a packed full of flavour. I also love ginger so as soon as I saw a picture of this double ginger cake on Instagram, I knew I had to make it. I have a copy of Julia's new book 'Around the Table' in my bedroom waiting to be wrapped and given to a friend for her birthday. This double ginger cake is adapted from a recipe in the book but not wanting to spoil the book with greasy hands, I found the recipe online.

The cake is oil based so it takes no time to put together and grating the fresh ginger was probably the most time consuming part of preparing the cake. As ginger pairs so well with lemon, I topped the cake with my old faithful cream cheese icing flavoured with lemon rind.

Here’s the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Julia’s double ginger cake with lemon cream cheese icing - 17cm version
Ingredients
2 eggs
65g raw sugar
100g golden syrup

100ml light olive or vegetable oil
30ml full cream milk
40g fresh ginger, grated
165g self-raising flour
pinch salt
3 tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
pinch freshly ground cloves
pinch black pepper

Lemon cream cheese icing
30g unsalted butter, softened
60g full fat cream cheese, room temperature
1½ tsp grated lemon rind
1 cup icing sugar, sifted with a pinch of salt
1 tbs cream or milk
Roughly chopped pistachios, to serve

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grease and flour a 17cm cake tin, then line the base with baking paper. 

Whisk the eggs and sugar in a bowl until pale and well incorporated. Pour in the golden syrup, oil, milk and ginger and continue to whisk until smooth. Gently whisk in the remaining dry ingredients until just incorporated. 

Pour into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted. A few crumbs on the skewer are fine too. Allow to cool for ten minutes in the tin then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Icing
Beat the room temperature butter and cream cheese together with the lemon rind in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment until smooth. Add the sugar and continue to whisk on a medium setting until all combined and light, around 3 minutes. If the icing is a little thick then loosen it with a little cream or milk. Spread the icing onto the cooled cake then top with pistachios before serving.

The cake packs a ginger wallop. I shared the cake with my neighbours and it was a big hit. Thanks for the recipe Julia.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian