• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Veggie Mama

Where friendly veg recipes and the 90s combine.

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • Freelance Writing and Editing/Social Media Services
  • Recipes
    • Baking
    • Basics
    • Breakfast
    • Kid Food
    • Lunchbox
      • Lunch
    • Dinner
    • Vegetarian
    • Vegan
    • Soup
    • Side Dishes
    • Snacks
    • Dessert / Sweet Things
    • Special Occasion
    • Party Food + Little Bits
    • Sauces / Relishes / Jams
    • Drinks
  • Life + Family
    • Health + Happiness
    • Kid Food
    • Blogging
    • Motherhood
    • The Throne Rangers Podcast: For Big Fans of the Royal Fam
    • I’m a ’90s kid
      • Sweet Teen Club Podcast
    • The Veggie Mama Dream Book
  • Home + Hearth
    • Around the Home
    • Grow your own food
    • Read
    • Make
    • Activities for toddlers
    • Craft
    • Stuff For Kids
  • Travel
  • Throne Rangers Podcast

Ginger Fluff Sponge

May 10, 2017 by Stacey 9 Comments

Ginger Fluff Sponge recipe from your childhood dreams, from a proper vintage recipe - just as good as you remember it!

Ginger fluff sponge, you complete me

People often ask me where my love of cooking started and it was at about 11 or 12, after a decade of watching my mum cook. Honestly, nothing more special than lamb chops and veg or spaghetti bolognese or on the odd occasion, tuna mornay or chow mein. We were simple country folk and we ate like it. Yet I always loved to watch.

Mum had a handful of cookbooks that I loved to read often – a big folder of Microwave recipes, a Women’s Weekly basics, the Chinese cookbook everyone had in the 80s, not heaps but enough for me to daydream about the days when I could eat so fancy. I found a little pink address book from somewhere and began diligently copying down the recipes I wanted to try one day. The Light and Luscious Lemon Delicious and the pikelets that I still make today, steamed pork buns and French souffles that sounded exotic with ingredients we couldn’t get at our outback supermarket.

Wartime-Recipe-Book

When my nana died, my mum saved me a recipe book of hers, knowing I would be most grateful for it. She too was a simple cook. She loved nothing more than a bowl of tinned fruit and cream, custard on everything and junket all the time. There were mushrooms on toast, roast mutton, silverside and white sauce for days… although there was that one time she asked me did I want a bit of fish head soup, and I looked at her as if she was crazy and no doubt said something tweenly obnoxious.

Ginger Fluff Sponge recipe from your childhood dreams, from a proper vintage recipe - just as good as you remember it!

I don’t know what the book’s name is, but I do go into more detail about the contents within in the Raspberry Buns recipe – well worth a look if you love tattered vintage recipe books. If nothing else, they provide a nostalgic laugh!

But in it is a recipe for ginger fluff sponge, something my mum said they always had growing up. Sometimes her sister would whip one up as an after-school treat and with 7 kids I doubt it would have lasted long. Hell it won’t last two minutes here.

So in honour of Mother’s Day on the weekend, I present to you the things that have been passed down to me that I hope one day to pass down to my kids.

Ginger-Fluff-Sponge-2 Ginger-Fluff-Sponge-4 Ginger-Fluff-Sponge-5 Vintage-Ginger-Fluff-Sponge-Recipe

Ginger Fluff Sponge

1/2 lb flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon or spice, 1 gill milk, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon golden syrup, 2 eggs, 3 oz butter, small cup sugar, level teaspoon carbonate soda in dessertspoon of boiling water. When cake is mixed, add soda. See that water is quite boiling for the soda. Stir it well and add to cake whilst fizzing.

Warm syrup and milk slightly. Plain cake method. Bake slowly in hot oven 20-25 minutes. Do not look for 1/4 hour. If risen, lower heat.

Filling: Whipped Cream, Vanilla Filling, or Confectioner’s Custard and chopped ginger or dates.

Icing Ingredients: Four tablespoons (rounded) icing sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, if liked, small teaspoon cocoa, 1 level teaspoon butter, 1 dessertspoon boiling water. Slices of preserved ginger or dates to decorate.

In modern terms? Ok!

Ginger Fluff Sponge

  • Mix all ingredients but the milk, golden syrup, baking soda, and boiling water.
  • Heat the milk and syrup and add to mixed ingredients.
  • Add the combined baking soda and boiling water.
  • Stir gently until just combined.
  • Pour into two greased and lined cake tins
  • Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes
  • DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR!
  • Ignore the 1/4 hour thing stated above, it will collapse at any time so just chill AWAY FROM THE OVEN.)

PS I actually whipped the egg whites first to get them fluffy then added the rest of the ingredients as stated (including yolks).

*************

Seriously though, how great is it to have a cake on the table ready for afternoon tea? We have a to-do every afternoon after school, the teapot comes out, plates of yum things are provided, and we chat about our day. It gives me no end of satisfaction to go about my daily business with a freshly-laid table and a lovingly-made pretty somethingorother on it.

(It does get a bit wearing the 54th time the four-year-old asks if she can have it yet…)

Ginger-Fluff-Sponge-1

What recipes do you love that your mum or grandmother did too? What reminds you of them? What do you make for your family now?

Thank you to Kitchen Warehouse for providing the beautiful Mason Cash Hearts mixing bowl. 

Filed Under: Baking, Special Occasion

Previous Post: « Back from Byron
Next Post: Constant Craving »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tina Lacy says

    May 10, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    My husband has requested this for mothers day!!!

    Reply
    • Tina Lacy says

      May 10, 2017 at 6:05 pm

      I don’t understand the recipe I think Im too young!

      Reply
      • Stacey says

        May 11, 2017 at 10:56 am

        Hahah I know it’s like another language in these old books. They’ve taken me a lifetime to figure out!

        This is a decent conversion chart for the pounds: http://startcooking.com/measurement-and-conversion-charts

        And a gill is a teacup or about 1/4 pint or 120ml.

        Reply
        • Tina Lacy says

          May 11, 2017 at 4:58 pm

          Thankyou 🙂

          Reply
  2. Amanda @ Cooker and a Looker says

    May 11, 2017 at 10:56 am

    My Mother in Law makes a very similar recipe for family birthdays. After I married Bearhands she gave me a handwritten copy. I’ll never make it while she’s alive though; the world only needs one Spicy Sponge Chef.

    Your Nanna’s cookbook is an absolute treasure!
    A x

    Reply
    • Stacey says

      May 11, 2017 at 3:04 pm

      We’ll never make it as good! What’s their lifetime of experience to our fledgling offerings haha x

      Reply
  3. Lynne Shandley says

    May 23, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    Mum used to make ginger fluff sponge on special occasions. Alas she didn’t pass the sponge making gene to me – I just make things you could use in the kitchen, so it’s nearly 30 years since I had a decent sponge. Thanks for the memories!

    Reply
    • Stacey says

      June 1, 2017 at 11:33 am

      If you’re ever over my way, I will make a ginger fluff sponge for you x

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Super-healthy ANZAC biscuits | Veggie Mama says:
    June 17, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    […] I guess has been handed down to her from her mum. It is the same recipes I find in a lot of my vintage cookbooks. I love the story behind them and the fierceness with which they’re protected (it’s the […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

 photo bloglovin_zpsc08b1cb6.png photo facebook_zpsbe931930.png photo pinterest_zps5f953e84.png photo twitter_zps0bd5425a.png photo instagram_zps798a3f4e.png photo google_zpsfc9b6d2c.png

View posts by category

View posts by month

Dispatch from the Kitchen Front

Sign up for the newsletter - it's a Very Nice Time.

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

Blogroll

  • Me and Orla
  • Lavender and Lovage
  • Kimba Likes
  • Baby Mac
  • Lunch Lady
  • Style and Shenanigans
  • My Darling Lemon Thyme
  • Attic 24
  • 101 Cookbooks
  • Cook Suck
  • Not Quite Nigella
  • Suger Coat It
  • Hugo & Elsa
  • Down to Earth
  • Fat Mum Slim
  • Champagne Cartel
  • Local is Lovely
  • MagnetoBoldToo
  • Green Kitchen Stories
  • Meet Me at Mikes
  • Whole Family Rhythms
  • Tinned Tomatoes
  • Normal Ness
  • Foxslane
  • Patchwork Cactus
  • Smaggle
  • Faux Fuchsia
  • Posie Gets Cozy
  • Styling You
  • The Annoyed Thyroid
  • Picklebums
  • Duchess Kate
  • My Wholefood Romance
  • Our Ash Grove
  • Samelia's Mum
  • Motherwho
  • I Spy Plum Pie
  • Mogantosh
  • Miss Chardy
  • Pinky Poinker
  • From Berkshire to Buckingham
  • The Pioneer Woman
  • Clairey Hewitt
  • Cooker and a Looker
  • Blossom Heart Quilts
  • Apples Under My Bed
  • Woogsworld
  • The Art of Simple
  • Naomi Loves
  • The Shady Baker
  • Handbag Mafia
  • The Little Mumma
  • Local Milk
  • Allison Tait Author
  • Practising Simplicity
  • The Plumbette
  • The Back Yard Lemon Tree
  • Design Mom

The Organic Place Recipe Roundup #3

Gnocchi with Ratatouille Sauce

Categories

Archives

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress