Ginger Cake

This highly spiced cake, from The Nordic Bakery Cookbook (recipe here except that you only need 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, not 16!), might be called a 'ginger' cake, but the spices that dominated were cardamom and cloves - spices that aren't to everyone's taste. I really liked the mix of spices - cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cardamom - but would probably swap the amounts of ginger and cardamom if I made it again - just to make it more 'gingery'.

I found that following the recipe exactly made a very stiff batter, but went ahead and baked it anyway, despite my misgivings. I used a 20cm (8") springform tin, after putting the batter into the suggested tin size and worrying that it would overflow; the baking time was still the same. Even the larger tin made a very high cake, so I wouldn't try it in the smaller tin in the future; what I would do is add a few tablespoons of milk to the batter to loosen it and try and make the cake a little moister. The cake had a lovely close texture and wasn't too sweet, but it was a little on the dry side. This made it a good cake for everyday use - perfect with a cup of tea or coffee, but not the sort of thing you'd produce for special occasions. This is not a bad thing - you certainly don't want fancy baking all the time!