Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for a sticky Easter ginger loaf cake

Standing tall among the giants of teatime cakes is the delicious sticky ginger cake. It’s unlike the lemon drizzle, victoria sponge or coffee-and-walnut cake in that those three have been baked in kitchens across generations and up and down Great Britain. The Jamaican ginger cake, however, is nearly always bought, and the shop version also includes milk and eggs as traditional key players. So here I’m doing the vegan equivalent of tackling two birds with one stone and veganising a much-loved favourite with the hope of encouraging you all to make it at home.

Sticky ginger loaf cake

This is one of those rare recipes where you can use gluten-free flour directly instead of regular plain flour, and it works perfectly.

Prep 5 min
Cook 1 hr 20 min, plus cooling time
Makes 1 x 1kg loaf, to serve 8

250g dates, pitted and roughly chopped
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g molasses
75g golden syrup
100g soft light brown sugar
80g rapeseed oil, plus extra for greasing
200g plain flour – gluten-free, if you like
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp fine sea salt
20g stem ginger in syrup, very finely diced, plus 2 tbsp of the syrup

Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5, and grease and line a 1kg loaf tin with baking paper.

Put the dates and bicarb in a heatproof bowl, cover with 200ml just-boiled water and leave to soften for 10 minutes. Tip the dates and their soaking water into a blender (or leave them in the bowl and use a stick blender), add the molasses, golden syrup, sugar and oil, and blitz smooth.

In a second large bowl, combine the flour, spices, baking powder and salt, then fold in the pureed date mixture until the batter is well combined. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Take the cake out of the oven and, while it’s still in the tin, brush the stem ginger syrup all over the top. Scatter over the chopped stem ginger, leave to cool completely, then remove from the tin, slice and serve.