I can offer you three tried and tested recipes. The first two are good family and picnic cakes. The last is for when you want something pretty for an occasion.
BANANA GINGERBREAD
Make this cake 3 days before needed so that the flavours develop.
240g self-raising flour
15ml ground ginger
150g warm milk
120g demerara sugar
90g soft salted butter
150g black treacle
2 tbs golden syrup
3 bananas, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and line a 1lb loaf tin.
Sieve the flour and ginger into a large bowl. Heat the milk, sugar, butter, treacle and syrup but do not boil. When melted together, add the bananas and eggs the pour it onto the flour and mix well.
Pour into the tin and bake for 1¼ hours. Turn out to cool then wrap immediately in double foil.
GINGER AND MARMALADE CAKE
150 gr golden syrup
75 gr butter
225 gr marmalade
225 gr self raising flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon ginger
1 egg
2 tablespoons of milk
Melt the butter with the syrup and marmalade
Whisk the egg with the milk and add to the marmalade mixture then sift the flour cinnamon and ginger in.
Mix and pour into tin.
Bake at 170°C for 45-55 min
STICKY LEMON AND GINGER CAKE
200g dates , stoned
200g butter , cut in pieces
300g dark muscovado sugar
2 eggs
50g fresh or frozen root ginger , grated
1 lemon , grated zest
200g self-raising flour
1 Bramley apple (about 250g/9oz) peeled and chopped into pea-sized pieces
50g white chocolate
1 tbsp chopped candied lemon peel, to decorate
1 tbsp sugar 'coffee crystals', to decorate
Heat oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3.
Butter and line a 20cm round cake tin (about 8cm deep) with baking parchment.
Put dates in a bowl and cover with boiling water.
Heat the butter in a small pan until melted, and stir in the sugar. Allow to cool slightly.
Beat in the eggs, ginger and lemon zest.
Drain the dates and chop them finely. Scrape them into the pan too, and mix well.
Stir in the flour, then apple. Spoon into the cake tin, put the tin on a baking sheet (this stops the base browning too much) then bake for about 1¼ hrs, until well risen. A skewer stuck into the cake should come out with a few moist crumbs sticking to it. Leave it to cool in the tin.
Break the white chocolate into a non-metallic bowl. Heat in the microwave, on medium setting, in one minute bursts until melted (or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water). Remove the cake from the tin and peel off the paper. Trickle the chocolate over the cake, scatter with the crystallised lemon peel and coffee crystals and leave to set before serving. If well wrapped, the cake keeps for at least a week - it just gets better and better. Or, wrap the cooled cake in several layers of cling film before decorating, and freeze for up to two months.
