This was made by special request. My grandson wanted help making it for his mother’s birthday, so that is what we did. We started from Nigella’s book, ‘Domestic Goddess‘. If you’ve ever made any of her recipes, they are well written and with latitude to adapt, and the final result is excellent. There’s a very similar recipe in ‘The Farmhouse Kitchen Book’, which has several recipes for gingerbread from around the UK.
INGREDIENTS:
- 150g butter
- 125g dark muscovado sugar
- 200g golden syrup
- 200g treacle
- 2 tsp ground ginger, or fresh grated ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 250ml milk
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 300g plain flour
- A tin measuring 30x20x5 cm (a medium roasting tin) greased and lined with greaseproof paper
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 175g icing sugar
- 1 tbsp warm water
METHOD:
-
- Preheat the oven to 170C
- In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, treacle, golden syrup, ginger and cinnamon. Once everything has combined, set aside to cool
- In a bowl, beat the eggs, and add the milk. Mix bicarbonate of soda with a little warm water, about 2 tbsp and add to the eggs and milk.
- Measure out the flour into a large bowl.
- Pour the egg mixture into the sugar mixture, stir together to combine and then tip the whole lot into the flour. Use a hand whisk to mix everything together, making a runny batter
- Pour the batter into the tin, put it into the oven and bake for around 50 minutes.
- Let the cake cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes before attempting to lift it out onto a wire rack.
- Once the cake is cool, you can ice it. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl, and mix in 1 tbsp water and 1 tbsp lemon juice, plus any food colouring that you wish. We used yellow, on account of that being a favourite colour and the lemon being yellow. Pour the icing into the middle of the cake and spread out a little, using a flat knife. It will tend to flow out so you don’t need to be too precise.
Once the icing has set, you can cut the gingerbread into fingers or squares. We cut ours up into 24 squares, but then we all ate at least two squares, served with Earl Grey tea,