It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! I’m a complete sucker for Christmas but don’t like getting excited too early about it as then I’m just all out of joy by the time the day comes. However it’s now the end of November and everything is starting to come together - the lights in London are twinkling, there is faux fur in most shop windows and the rain in coming down in sheets! Oh yes, winter in the UK has arrived.
When I get home out of the rain and cold there is nothing I like better than filling my house with great wintery smells. This basically boils down to stews and spices. So this week I was inspired to make gingerbread as it’s wonderfully aromatic and just has the most amazing texture to it. It also means I get to use golden syrup and treacle. I’m childishly happy that it comes in tins with a lid that needs prising off, and that no matter how careful you are there is always golden syrup over your hands that needs licking off. Simple things … I decided to use a Nigella recipe that uses fresh ginger as that sounded very nice, plus most of the ingredients can be measured straight into a saucepan that you then use for the whole batter. Less washing up and less mess.
The smell itself is reason enough to bake this but the finished cake has a dark luscious umptiousness (surely a Nigella word if ever there was one) to it which is quite incredible. As it’s a ‘tray bake’ in shape, and quite rich, you’ll get lots of little squares out of it to share around. I also imagine it would be good hot with custard so I’ll need to try that!
Ingredients
150g butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
2 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated (I also added the juice that came off while grating)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
250ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp bicarb of soda dissolved in 2tbsp of warm water
300g plain flour
1. Preheat the oven to 170°/GM3
2. Get a largish saucepan – I used one that fitted on my electronic weighing scales so I could weigh straight into it. Add the butter, sugar, golden syrup, treacle, ginger and cinnamon. Melt these together on a low heat.
3. Once melted add the milk, eggs and bicarcb in water and mix well.
4. Now Nigella says to put the flour in a bowl and add the liquid ingredients in but I couldn’t be bothered with getting a bowl dirty. I just added the flour and mixed well with a balloon whisk. The cake came out fine.
5. Put the batter in a lined roasting tin. Dimensions suggested were 30x20x5. I used a 26x18x5 and it was ok. Bake for about an hour but it depends on your tin dimensions. I’d say check after 45 minutes and adjust time accordingly. Mine needed 1 hour 15 mins.
6. Now Nigella puts lemon icing on but I couldn’t be bothered. Plus it gets a wonderful sticky crust on its own which I quite like.
7. Leave to cool before cutting (who am I trying to kid? Cut a corner out of the warm cake and demolish).
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