I often see British recipes calling for stem ginger -- peeled ginger preserved in sugar syrup -- but I usually just pass these recipes by because I have never seen stem ginger for sale in a store in the United States. I know I can buy it from Amazon for a pretty penny, or even make my own, but both options seem like too much trouble. However, at some point I figured that I might be missing out on a lot of recipes for no good reason. Crystallized ginger is basically the same thing (except that it's cut into smaller pieces and rolled in sugar instead of being preserved in syrup), and I always have it on hand. I decided to try using crystallized ginger instead of stem ginger in a "Ginger and White Chocolate Cake" from BBC Good Food.
I had to make a few more substitutions for this recipe. The cake calls for both stem ginger and some of the syrup in which the ginger is preserved, so I needed to come up with something to replace the syrup. I decided to use ginger syrup from the ginger people. The only ingredients in the syrup are ginger and sugar, and importantly, I can buy it at my local grocery store.
The recipe also calls for black treacle, and I happened to have a tin on hand. When I grabbed the treacle from the cupboard, I noticed that even though the tin was new and unopened, it was five months past date. Normally this would not have stopped me from using it, but I also noticed that right underneath the expiration date, the tin was printed with the message, "DISPOSE OF ON EXPIRY." This got me curious, and after a bit of Googling I learned that pressure can build up in the tins over time and cause them to explode. I didn't want to take a chance on ending up with treacle sprayed all over my kitchen, so I tossed the tin in the trash and decided to used Grandma's molasses instead.
My final two substitutions were ones I make all the time. I never keep self-raising flour on hand, so I used all-purpose flour and added baking powder to compensate (I follow this advice from Nigella Lawson). And because muscovado sugar is ridiculously expensive in the US, I used light brown sugar instead.
After the cake was completely cooled, I added a glaze made from milk, ginger syrup, powdered sugar, and melted white chocolate (I used Callebaut Velvet). I added some crystallized ginger on top (this was not a substitution -- the recipe actually calls for crystallized ginger for the garnish) and let the glaze set before slicing and serving. The icing set into a fudge-like texture that wasn't completely firm.
I loved this cake and it was perfect for fall. It had a warm ginger flavor and a moist, pleasing texture. I loved the spicy-sweet bits of crystallized ginger in the cake and on top. I couldn't taste the molasses at all, so this was definitely a ginger cake and not a gingerbread cake. The ginger-white chocolate icing was so good -- it was not too sweet and the thick texture was decadent. I would happily make this cake again and I wouldn't change a thing.
As a general rule, I strongly disfavor making recipe substitutions -- or at least anything more significant than swapping out one type of nut, dried fruit, or flavor of jam for another -- because baking is a science and I don't like to gamble with alterations that might mess up the results. But each of my five substitutions in this recipe were very minor, and I'm confident that making the cake as written would produce a nearly identical, equally tasty result.
Recipe: "Ginger and White Chocolate Cake" from BBC Good Food.
Comments