Treat me: Ginger cider cake

Two of my favourite redheads have birthdays this weekend - so in their honour I have devised a ginger-y cake. You don't have to have redhead or suffered years of school yard torment to enjoy it, but it helps if you like light, lovely cake studded with nuggets of crystallised ginger and walnuts. Who's in?

Ginger cider cake
This is an adapted version of a cake in Margaret Fulton's 'My Very Special Cookbook', a book worth hunting for in your next charity shop raids. I used a bottle of Rekorderlig Orange-Ginger cider (which is actually very drinkable, for once you can believe the hype), but you could use any cider or beer and change the fruit/spices accordingly. It makes a very big cake suitable for baking in a bundt tin - but make sure you grease and flour it really well or you'll suffer the consequences. I can confirm the cake is still edible when it comes out of the tin in two pieces, but it's less suitable to present to someone as a birthday treat.

250g soft butter
400g brown sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
100g crystallised ginger, roughly chopped
100g walnuts, roughly chopped
500ml beer or cider, at room temperature
450g plain flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and/or line a large bundt tin.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy - easiest done with a stand mixer or food processor - then beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the ginger and walnuts.
Sift the flour, baking soda, salt and spices together then add about a quarter of it to the butter mixture. Fold in, then add a quarter of the beer or cider. Repeat until all the ingredients are combined.
Scrape into the prepared tin and bake for about 45 minutes, until the cake is well risen and a skewer plunged into the centre comes out clean.
Leave in the tin for 10 minutes to cool, then carefully turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Have a great weekend, everyone x