Name: Pepper Cake
Yield: Makes one cake, approx. 16 × 11 cm/6 × 4 inches
Cuisine: German
Ingredients: 225 g/8 oz flour; 55 g/2 oz salted butter; 1½ tsp ground allspice; 225 g/8 oz black treacle; 1 tbsp caraway seeds; 1 tsp ground cloves; 55 g/2 oz brown sugar; 1 tsp ground ginger; Generous pinch of salt; 25 g/1 oz minced candied peel; 120 ml/4 fl oz beer, slightly warmed; ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Preparation info

Makes
one
cake, approx. 16 × 11 cm 6 × 4 inches

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

At Christmas We Feast

By Annie Gray

Published 2021

About

Anon, unpublished ms, c.1840³⁷

There are very few recipes named as pepper cake, though many recipes for pepper cake-like things exist. The name is probably taken from the German for one of the many forms of gingerbread there – Pfeffernüsse is still a current term for small gingery biscuits, and variants on the theme are also found in Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. While recipes sometimes used ye