Spice Cake
A moist, warmly spiced loaf cake of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves with buttermilk, baked for 35 minutes and glazed with icing.
Photograph credit: Spice Cake with sea foam frosting (image of spice cake on Wikidata Q25039790) by Kimberly Vardeman · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Spice cake is a gingerbread that has been taught some manners: soft, tender, brown with sugar and scented with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. The spices are warm rather than hot, and the crumb is moist and slightly dense. It is a gentle cake.
Brown sugar and oil keep it soft for days, and buttermilk gives a gentle tang and a light crumb. Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately, then fold them together until just combined. Stop mixing as soon as no dry flour is visible. Overmixed batter turns the cake tough and gives tunnels inside. Brown sugar helps.
Bake in a lined tin until a skewer comes out clean, and cool before icing. The glaze is icing sugar thinned with milk, spread over the top while the cake is cool so it sets in a thin, shiny layer. After a day the cake improves, once the spices have had time to settle into the crumb. Wrap leftovers well.
Spice Cake: Step by Step
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Heat the oven to 180°C / 355°F. Grease and line a 23 cm square tin.
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Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, spices and salt in a bowl.
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Whisk the sugar, eggs, oil and buttermilk in another bowl. Fold into the flour mixture until just combined.
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Pour into the tin and bake for 35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then lift out.
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Whisk the icing sugar and milk until smooth and spread over the cooled cake.
Related guide: Pan and tin size.
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A Few Pointers
- Do not overmix once the flour goes in.
- Check with a skewer at 30 minutes.
- Ice the cake only when completely cool.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- Out of buttermilk? The usual stand-in is a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred into 250 ml of ordinary milk and left five minutes; it is thinner than cultured buttermilk, so a batter may need a little less of it.
What to Serve With It
Tea · Whipped cream · Stewed apples · Vanilla ice cream
Leftovers and Storage
Keeps for 4 days in an airtight tin. Freeze unglazed for 2 months.
Nutrition per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published .
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