Ginger For Ginger And Carrot Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Ginger And Walnut Carrot Cake (from AT MY TABLE) includes a combination of ground ginger and nuggets of chopped crystallised ginger. There are a couple of reasons why crystallised ginger is used. The first reason is the availability of crystallised ginger versus stem ginger. In the UK it is easy to find jars of stem ginger (ginger preserved in sugar syrup) in the supermarket, but outside of the UK it is very difficult to find, but crystallised or candied ginger can be found in many countries and it is nice to have a recipe that everyone can enjoy.

Secondly, for the topping crystallised ginger is easy to chop and scatter over the top of the cake whereas stem ginger tends to stick together in clumps when chopped and the syrup clinging to the stem ginger will soften the cream cheese icing. It therefore doesn't make particular sense to specify two different types of ginger to buy and have half-used packages or jars. However if you have some stem ginger that you want to use up then you chop it and could use this in the cake itself, though we would still prefer to use crystallised ginger for the topping.