Sticky ginger cake

Chop the stem ginger. Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3. Grease the inside of a 19cm-deep square cake tin and line it with 2 oblongs of baking paper (greasing the tin first helps the paper stay in place). Put the butter, golden syrup, treacle and stem ginger in a pan and heat until the butter melts – don’t let it boil. If you grease the bowl you’re measuring them in, they will easily slide out into the pan.

Set aside the syrup mixture to cool to lukewarm. If the syrup is too warm, the cake mixture may become lumpy and the chocolate will melt when you mix it all together. Sift the flour with the bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and the chilled chocolate drops.

In a different mixing bowl, lightly beat the eggs with the milk until evenly blended. Add to the bowl containing the flour along with the lukewarm syrup mixture and stir until just evenly blended.

Transfer to the cake tin, scrape all of the mixture out with a spatula. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes or until the middle of the top springs back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and finish cooling on a wire rack.