cinnamondev

Read the instructions in advance, as there is some prep work involved, though not much :)

Ingredients

• 225g Self-Raising Flour
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder (Under-estimate here or it might rise too much or taste bad)
• 2 eggs
• Spices to taste!
  • 2.5 tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • 2 tsp Allspice
  • 2 tsp Ground Ginger (underestimate slightly, vary ginger slightly to your taste, this recipe uses quite a lot of ginger :) )
• Treacle syrup mixture
  • 135g Golden Syrup (change to taste)
  • 125g Dark Brown Sugar
  • 90g Unsalted Butter
  • 150g Black Treacle (it is worse than glue, be careful!!)
• 20g Ginger, peeled and finely grated
• 65g Stem Ginger in syrup (we will use some syrup in cake and the drizzle), diced up into small (but not fine) pieces.
  • I saw some people online also and or instead use crystallized or candied ginger! Candied ginger won’t be as strong of a ginger flavour, crystalized ginger has a chewy texture that you might find appealing. Experiment and mix/match if you want! :)
• 120 ml Spiced Dark Rum + Extra for Sultanas
  • Feel free to experiment with this, 120 ml did well though
• ~50g sultanas/raisins/your favourite dried grapes, have fun?
• Crack of salt
• Teaspoon of plain flour

Optional: Cinnamon Rum Drizzle

• ~25ml Water
• Stem Ginger Syrup to Taste, we used quite a lot here.
• 10 tsp / 55 g “ish” of sugar
• 20 ml rum. We kind of guessed it here with about 2.5 lids full.
• 1 tsp cinnamon, to taste.
• Dash of lemon or other citrus juice

Method

1. Place your sultanas in a bowl, and submerge in spiced rum. Cover and leave for a while. Reckon about 12 hours to a day for the best results, though you can easily do this a couple hours before cooking, with sultanas this worked very effectively.
2. Pre-heat oven to 180 C
3. Place all the treacle syrup ingredients in a pan, and gently heat + stir until all the sugar, etc.. has been fully incorproated. Take off the heat and leave to cool.
4. Sieve mixed self-raising flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl
5. Add your spices to the mixing bowl, to taste.
6. Once the treacle syrup has cooled to about half or 3/4 ‘treacle thickness’, or enough to put a finger in, add both eggs and all the rum. Mix this very well, or the egg will not sit atop the syrup.
7. Mix the treacle syrup into the dry mix, stirring until fully incorporated. Don’t worry about it seeming somewhat runny, this is fine.
8. Mix in shredded ginger and stem ginger, put 1-2 tsp of the syrup into the mixture. Mix well so that both are well distributed.
9. Drain any excess rum from the soak sultanas, and briefly lightly dry on a paper towel. Then lightly cover in plain flour until decently covered. This should help stop them sinking to the bottom of the mix :)
10. Add the sultanas to the mix and stir so that they are well distributed
11. Butter and line a loaf tin, pour mix and cook for 50 minutes to an hour, or until a skewer comes out looking clean.

Serve as slices or with syrup (instructions below)

Optional syrup

1. Place sugar and water into pan, heat and stir till sugar starts dissolving well into water and is up to a temperature.
2. Add spiced rum and cinnamon, stir well and leave to simmer until it starts thickening. The alcohol in the rum should cook off, and the intense ginger scents of the stem ginger syrup should mellow somewhat.
3. Once off the heat, add in the dash of citrus juice.

Serve while heated, else it may crystalize.