Walnut, Ginger and Chocolate Cake

Let's face it, cakes are out of fashion. If you're eating cake and it's not someone's birthday then you're either quite old or have an irregular cake addiction. Either way, cakes need an image makeover, rebranding, remarketing, a haircut - but if I'm being honest then I'm probably not the person to accomplish that. Instead, I have a quite old fashioned cake recipe for you. This base recipe comes from my mother but I've included ginger and chocolate to give it a bit of edge.

















Ingredients
2 1/2 - 2 cups of self-raising flour
2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
75 g of butter + extra for greasing and mixing with melted chocolate
2 large eggs or 3 medium eggs
a splash of milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-5 pieces of stem ginger plus accompanying syrup
as many walnuts as you like
as much chocolate as you'd like

















Method
Preheat oven to 250 degrees centigrade. Whisk sugar and eggs together until pale and fluffy. Slowly add the flour and baking powder to the egg and sugar mixture until fully incorporated. Add the the butter, milk and vanilla extract and keep whisking. Crush some roasted walnuts and chop stem ginger into chunks. Add the walnuts, stem ginger chunks and stem ginger syrup to the mixture. Butter a Springform cake tin and pour the cake mixture into the buttered tin. Bake until golden and then cool on a rack. Cut horizontally in half and layer on a melted chocolate and butter mixture reserving some for decorating the top. Be creative on the top of the cake and then let it cool again. Take pictures, eat cake, wallow in your own lack of coolness. Voila.