Streaky Guinness Gingerbread

Our answer

Nigella's Guinness Gingerbread (from KITCHEN) is a sticky gingerbread cake made with the melting method, where the butter, sugar, syrup, Guinness and spices are put in a saucepan and heated until the butter and sugar have melted. The recipe uses dark muscovado (dark brown) sugar and we wonder if the sugar didn't dissolve properly when the batter was mixed, so that when the cake baked the lumps of sugar in the cake batter melted and caused streaks.

Muscovado and soft brown sugars can dry out quite easily and when they do dry out small hard lumps form, which can be very difficult to dissolve, even in a saucepan of liquid. Try to seal brown sugar in an airtight container to reduce the risk of moisture loss and you can buy small pieces of terracotta that you can dampen and put in the container to help to keep the sugar soft. If the sugar has dried out then you can soften it again by leaving the sugar in a bowl overnight covered with a piece of damp kitchen paper (paper towel) and with a lid or plate covering the bowl. But if you do this be aware that there may still be some tiny hard lumps left and make sure that they are fully dissolved in the Guinness and butter mixture before adding the flour.