Gingerbread Cake

The kitchen staffers here at SAVEUR headquarters are tireless folk. As part of a research assignment involving an infallible English gingerbread cake recipe for our upcoming November issue, Ben Mims, our assistant kitchen director, and his team of interns baked no less than 15 cakes. Originally, the recipe that the staff was working from called for Lyle's Golden Syrup, a canned treacle that's mostly available in Britain. So, to accommodate the majority of our readers that live in North America, the kitchen staff baked cakes using all sorts of substitutes, from molasses to maple syrup to Eggo's pancake syrup. "The supporting spices and ingredients in the recipe brought out the distinct character in each syrup that can get lost when you taste the syrups on their own," Ben says. "Each syrup created an entirely different cake, and it's great to have such a versatile recipe that can play chameleon to whatever sweetener you have on hand." (If you can't wait until November for our English Gingerbread Cake recipe, here's one from the archives that uses molasses.)