Hairy Bikers ginger sponge is Grandma Sindy’s recipe, passed down through Ruth’s family from Sunday teas at her house. It is in Mums Still Know Best, where eight ingredients make about 12 squares at roughly 175 calories, and only ten minutes of the 1 hour 48 are hands on.
Si and Dave write in Mums Still Know Best that Grandma Sindy was “an excellent baker”, and she was Ruth’s mum’s mum, known to the family as Nina. This is a light golden sponge rather than a dark treacle cake, since there is just one teaspoon of ground ginger in it.
The hot water is what makes it work, and 240ml of it goes into just 200g of flour. Nothing else in the recipe would give you a crumb that open, so the water is doing a job rather than just loosening the mix.
Hairy Bikers Ginger Sponge Recipe
Description
Flour, sugar, ground ginger and bicarbonate go into one bowl, then the margarine gets rubbed in with your fingers. Egg, golden syrup and a large measure of just-boiled water turn it into a loose batter, beaten with a wooden spoon and poured straight into a lined tin.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Line the tin: Line a 28 x 18cm baking tin with baking parchment and heat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4.
- Mix the dry ingredients: Put the flour, sugar, ground ginger and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and mix them together.
- Rub in the marge: Rub the margarine into the dry mix with your fingers until it disappears.
- Add the wet: Add the beaten egg, the golden syrup and the hot water, then mix everything together well with a wooden spoon.
- Bake it: Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.
- Cool and cut: Leave it to cool in the tin, then cut it into squares once it is completely cold.
FAQs
Is this the same as the other Hairy Bikers ginger cake?
No, and it catches people out, because there are two and they are nothing alike. This is the mums know best ginger cake, a pale light sponge from Grandma Sindy with a single teaspoon of ground ginger.
The ginger cake in British Classics is the other one, dark as treacle, with two tablespoons of ground ginger, cayenne pepper and a whole jar of stem ginger in it. If you remembered something almost black and very sticky, that is the page you want. If you remembered a golden square off a tea table, you are in the right place.
Why margarine rather than butter?
Because that is what Grandma Sindy used, and this is a proper family recipe rather than a modernised one.
It does change the result. Marge is softer than fridge-cold butter so it rubs in far faster, and there is only 55g of it against 200g of flour, which is a very lean mix by any standard. Compare it with rock cakes, which rub 125g of chilled butter into 250g of flour, more than twice the fat for the same flour. Butter works here if that is what you have, just soften it first.
The batter comes out very runny, is that right?
Yes, and it should. With 240ml of hot water going into 200g of flour, what you pour into the tin will look far too loose to be a cake.
Trust it and pour it in. Beat it with a wooden spoon as the recipe says rather than a whisk, because you only want everything combined, not aerated. It will still look wrong going into the tin and it will still rise.
Only one teaspoon of ginger, is that enough?
For this cake, yes, because it is meant to taste gently of ginger rather than hit you with it. It is a teatime sponge, not a gingerbread.
That same single teaspoon turns up in ginger and treacle scones, which pair it with cinnamon, allspice, treacle and chopped stem ginger to build something much stronger. If you want more heat here, another half teaspoon will do it without changing anything else, though you start moving away from what Grandma Sindy actually made.
Is this a cheap cake to make?
About as cheap as baking gets. Flour, sugar, marge, one egg, a spoonful of syrup and some ginger, and it fills a 28 x 18cm tin with twelve squares at around 175 calories each.
Put that next to the coffee and walnut cake, which also serves twelve but needs 375g of butter, 300g of icing sugar, four eggs and a jar of coffee essence, and lands at 540 calories a slice. That one is a cake you plan. This is one you make because it is raining.
