Greatest Recipes Ever: Constance Spry’s Belvoir Ginger Cake
Rose Prince chooses Constance Spry’s Belvoir Ginger Cake as one of her greatest recipes ever.

‘A recipe that I have known since childhood, and the best, stickiest, darkest cake that just gets better and better stored in the tin'
Belvoir Ginger Cake Extract from The Constance Spry Cookery Book Constance Spry & Rosemary Hume First published in 1956 by J. M. Dent & Sons
This must be made at least a day or two before required.
Ingredients 4oz butter 4oz brown sugar 4oz sultanas 10oz (or a breakfast cup) black treacle 1 teaspoon ground ginger 2 eggs ½lb plain flour ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 2-3 tablespoons milk A few blanched split almonds or 1 piece of stem ginger drained from syrup and sliced Method Cream butter, add sugar, cream again thoroughly. Then add fruit, treacle, ginger and the eggs one at a time with about half of the flour.
Mix thoroughly. Add remaining flour with the soda warmed in the milk. Turn at once into a papered, greased, and floured 8in tin. Bake in a slow oven for about an hour or more. When two-thirds baked, scatter the top of the cake with preserved ginger or almonds. Finish baking.
This cake is excellent for picnics eaten with a wedge of cheese, Cumberland fashion.
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