Pass the Plate

I’ve always loved spice cake, but it tends to include nuts and/or raisins – which I don’t love. I’ve searched far and wide for recipes that didn’t include these, but they’ve never come close to that fantastic flavor of a good spice cake.

Finally, here it is, my holy grail of spice cake recipe!

Ingredients

• Butter, room temperature 1 cup 225 g
• Brown sugar 2 cups 475 ml
• Eggs, beaten 3
• Vanilla extract 2 tsp 10 ml
• Milk 1 cup 225 ml
• Flour 2½ cups 600 ml
• Cornstarch ¼ cup 50 ml
• Baking powder 4 tsp 20 ml
• Salt ½ tsp 2.5 ml
• Ginger 2 tsp 10 ml
• Cinnamon 1 tsp 5 ml
• Nutmeg ½ tsp 2.5 ml
• Allspice ½ tsp 2.5 ml
• Cloves ½ tsp 2.5 ml

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F / 180°C.
2. Grease your muffin molds or a 13 x 9 inch / 33 x 23 cm pan.
3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add the eggs and vanilla.
5. Add the milk.
6. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt and spices.
7. Add the dry ingredients gradually to the wet ones and stir until well combined. Don’t over-mix it though, a lumpy batter is good.
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes (40 minutes for a cake) or until an inserted toothpick comes out with no more than a few crumbs on it.

This recipe yields about 27 muffins in my smaller-sized silicone molds, but probably makes 12-13 in standard-sized muffin molds. I’ve tried cutting down this recipe to fit, but the texture is never as good. I’d recommend trying to find a way to accommodate the extra batter, it’s worth the slight inconvenience 😉

These are great on their own or with some cream cheese frosting.