Stem ginger substitutes

Ginger that has been candied in syrup and then dried and rolled in sugar, sold in dry chunks or slices.

Best for

ginger cake, ginger biscuits, sticky toffee pudding, scones, ice cream, steamed puddings

Prep

Chop first, then soak in boiling water, tea or rum for ten minutes and drain before folding into the batter.

This is the same ingredient at a different stage, which is why it is the standard answer. Stem ginger is wet and soft; crystallised ginger has been dried, so it is firmer, chewier, more fibrous and noticeably sweeter because of the sugar clinging to the outside. Dropped into a cake batter dry, it stays gritty and slightly tough and can pull moisture out of the crumb. Chop it to the size you need, cover it with a tablespoon of boiling water or strong tea per 50g, leave it ten minutes and drain, and it plumps back into something very close to the real thing. Because of the coating sugar, take a tablespoon of sugar out of the recipe for every 100g you use.

Fresh root ginger peeled, sliced and poached in sugar syrup until translucent.

Best for

any recipe calling for stem ginger and its syrup, ginger cake, cheesecake topping, gifts and batch baking

Prep

Keeps for about a month covered in its syrup in a clean jar in the fridge. It is a fridge preserve, not a shelf-stable one, so do not treat it as a canning recipe.

The only swap that gives you both the soft pieces and the spiced syrup, and it needs no special ingredients. Peel 200g of fresh ginger, slice it about 5mm thick, simmer it in water for 25 to 30 minutes until a knife goes through with no resistance, drain, then return it to the pan with 200g sugar and 200ml of the cooking water and simmer gently for another 30 minutes until the syrup thickens and the pieces look glassy. Choose the plumpest, smoothest, palest ginger you can find; older ginger with papery skin and visible fibres stays stringy no matter how long you cook it, and that is the one thing that will make the result feel different from a jar.

A set spreadable preserve made from ginger and sugar, often with shreds of ginger suspended in it.

Best for

ginger cake, glazes for cake and ham, swirling into cheesecake or ice cream, replacing the jar syrup

Prep

Warm briefly to loosen if you are brushing it on as a glaze, and sieve it if you want a clear shine.

Flavour-wise this is very close, and a chunky ginger preserve even gives you small shreds of ginger. What changes is structure: it is a soft set jam, so instead of biting into distinct warm nuggets you get ginger flavour spread evenly through the crumb, and the cake reads as more uniformly spicy and slightly denser. It also carries more sugar and more water than an equal weight of drained stem ginger, so hold back a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of milk or water per 100g used. It is the best single answer when the recipe wants the jar syrup for a glaze.

Dried ginger root milled to a fine powder.

Best for

gingerbread, biscuits, spice cakes, when you only need the warmth

Prep

Sift it in with the flour rather than adding it late, so it disperses instead of forming hot specks.

Be clear about what this does and does not do. Drying changes ginger's chemistry, so ground ginger is less bright and lemony than fresh or preserved ginger and more dry, dusty and persistently hot at the back of the throat. It will make a cake taste convincingly of ginger and it costs nothing, but it contributes no chew, no moist pockets and no sweetness, so a ginger loaf made this way tastes flatter and more one-note, with none of the little bursts of soft ginger that make the original worth eating. Add a tablespoon of golden syrup or honey alongside it to put back some of the missing stickiness.

Raw root ginger, finely grated on a microplane.

Best for

sauces, poached fruit, quick puddings, stir-through creams

Prep

Grate on a microplane, discarding any stringy pulp left behind on the blade.

Fresh ginger is much sharper and more aggressively hot than preserved ginger, because candying tames the burn considerably, and it brings raw fibrous threads rather than tender pieces. In a cake batter that heat can taste harsh and slightly soapy. Where it works well is anywhere the ginger is going to cook in liquid, such as poached pears, a fruit compote or a sauce, because the simmering does the mellowing that the sugar syrup normally would. Grate it on the fine side of a microplane so no fibres survive, and add the sugar to account for what the syrup would have contributed.

A thick neutral or lightly flavoured sugar syrup.

Best for

brushing over ginger cake, soaking sponges, sweetening cream, drizzling over ice cream

Prep

Warm gently with the ginger stirred in, then cool slightly before brushing so it soaks in rather than running off.

Many recipes ask for the pieces and the syrup separately, and running out of one does not mean running out of the other. Golden syrup is the closest in body and has a faint caramel note that suits ginger cake well. Honey works but pushes the flavour towards floral. Neither carries any ginger, so stir in about an eighth of a teaspoon of ground ginger per tablespoon, or a teaspoon of finely grated fresh ginger if you want it brighter, and warm it briefly to let the flavour bloom into the syrup.