One of our neighbors invited us along for coffee at the beginning of December; she's from Switzerland, so served Stollen. Shortly afterwards, Draeger's, the local grocery store, had Tate & Lyle treacle on the shelves where it stocks seasonal British imports. Since it was my turn next to host morning coffee, I turned up the Scottish ginger cake recipe from Good Housekeeping (my copy was purchased in 1978), then crossed it with the recipe for Alternative Christmas cake, gluten free, from Rose Carrarini in last year's Financial Times.

We liked the result, and various people asked for the recipe.

Scottish Ginger Nut Cake

Ingredients

350g (12 oz) black treacle (Tate & Lyle brand)
175g (6 oz) unsalted butter
75g (3 oz) soft brown sugar
350g (12 oz) almond meal/flour
80g (3 oz) rice flour
2.5ml (1/2 tsp) salt
30 ml (2 level tbsp) ground ginger
15 ml (1 level tbsp) ground cinnamon
50g (2 oz) fresh ginger, chopped
50g (2 oz) sultanas, chopped
100g (4 oz) roughly chopped walnuts or almonds or pecans
zest of 1 orange
100g (4 oz) candied peel, chopped
4 eggs, beaten

Method

Butter 2 non-stick loaf tins (900mm x 75mm x 65mm, '2lb' tins)
Put butter, treacle and sugar into a pan and warm gently until melted.Take off the heat. Mix with the almond meal, rice flour, salt, spices, ginger, sultanas, walnuts, orange zest and peel. Beat the eggs, and add them to the pan, stirring in to make a pourable mixture. Put half of the mixture into each tin - it will rise a little.
Bake in the oven at 170C (325 F) for about 1 hour. Partly cool in the tins, while still warm turn out onto a wire rack to cool. This cake improves with keeping.

The original recipes, for reference