High Altitude Cardamom Ginger Cake with Homemade Lemon Curd
This cardamom ginger cake is an easy to make sheet cake that's incredibly soft, moist and fluffy, and perfectly spiced. Serve squares of the cake with sweet and tart homemade lemon curd.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- 2 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 ¾ cups whole or lowfat buttermilk, room temperature
- 1 ¾ cups dark brown sugar, lightly packed
- 3 large eggs
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Lemon Curd
- 4 egg yolks
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 4-5 small lemons, zested and juiced (you'll need 1/2 cup lemon juice)
- ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a 9x13 baking pan with non-stick spray.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, cardamom and ginger.
- Separately, whisk together the buttermilk, brown sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla.
- Add the liquid ingredients to the dry, and whisk just until combined and mostly smooth, and pour the batter into the pan.
- Bake the cake on the center oven rack for about 30 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean or with moist crumbs clinging to it.
- Cool the cake for at least 1-2 hours and serve warm, or cool completely to serve at room temperature. Serve with generous spoonfuls of lemon curd.
Lemon Curd
- Set a saucepan filled with several inches of water on the stove and bring it to a simmer.
- In a heatproof bowl (one that can sit on top of the saucepan without the bottom of the bowl touching the water), whisk together the egg yolks and sugar.
- Add the lemon zest and 1/2 cup of lemon juice. If 4 small lemons doesn't give you enough juice, you can juice another lemon, or just add some bottled juice.
- Set the bowl over the saucepan. Stir slowly but constantly, with a whisk or spatula, and cook the lemon curd until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. It should take about 10 minutes to thicken. Note that it will not be as thick and jellied as store-bought lemon curd, but will have the consistency of warm pudding. It will thicken more as it cools, though.
- Remove the bowl from the heat, and dry off the bottom of the bowl. Pour the lemon curd through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl, to strain out the lemon zest and any bits of cooked egg. Discard what's left in the strainer.
- Stir the butter into the lemon curd, 2 tablespoons at a time, until completely melted and smooth.
- Pour the lemon curd into a glass jar and keep refrigerated. Let come to room temperature for a pouring or drizzling consistency.
- Yields about 2 cups of lemon curd.
Notes
- The cake will stay moist and fresh for 4-5 days, stored in an airtight container.
- Homemade lemon curd should be refrigerated, and is best eaten within 2 weeks.
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