Baking

9 Dec 2013 09:51 pm
curiouswombat: (Bake on)
[personal profile] curiouswombat
I've just had one of those moments when you realise you've turned into your own mother.

I was baking some gingerbread, for a cake stall at church in aid of the Philippines Appeal, and I looked at the tins I was using. They are very tatty and rusted. This isn't a problem, as I line them. But I suddenly thought how very old they looked - just as I remember my mother using very old cake tins when I was younger. And I realised that these ones I use regularly are ones I bought about... um... 30 years ago.

My mum's 'very old tins' were probably not that old.

Here is a picture of the two gingerbreads - as you can see, the cake didn't come into contact with the elderly tins!

gingerbread

Date: 09/12/2013 11:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] curiouswombat.livejournal.com
In Britain the word gingerbread is used for two different things - the hard, biscuit, type that is used to make gingerbread men, and the soft, cake like, version which is much more the everyday type, at least to me.

It is an everyday cake because it is so easy to make - would you like the recipe?

Date: 09/12/2013 11:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-winterwitch.livejournal.com
Yes, please! :o) The Swedish have the same varieties, but they call it "pepparkakor", "pepper cake" instead of gingerbread, as do we, though we only have the hard, biscuit type variety.(Whereas "biscuit" is the name for sponge cake in German. *g*, while we use the word which became your "cake" for your "biscuits", which are then "Kekse" in German.)

Date: 10/12/2013 12:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] curiouswombat.livejournal.com
The way the words for different baked goods mean different things in different countries is worthy of a study in itself, I think!

I have a pepper cake recipe too, should you want it.

However - this is a very traditional British gingerbread recipe. It is enough to fill a large tin usually used to cook the Sunday roast - so it is the amount that made both of those cakes in the picture - but it is easy to half it to just make one.

As it is an old recipe it is in ounces...

8 oz butter or margarine
8 oz soft brown sugar
8 oz golden syrup, or treacle for a darker gingerbread
12 oz plain flour
2 rounded dessert spoons ground ginger
3 rounded teaspoons cinnamon
2 beaten eggs
1/2 pint milk
2 rounded teaspoons bicarbonate of soda.

Melt butter, sugar and syrup/treacle together. (I do it in a big plastic bowl in the microwave.)

Stir in the flour and spices, then the eggs.

Warm milk to tepid, stir the bicarb into it, and then stir it into the main mixture.

It will be very runny, don't panic!

Pour into lined roasting tin, or two loaf tins (as in my picture) and bake at 140C(fan oven - 160C if not a fan oven) for an 75 -90 minutes - it should be firm and springy when it is cooked.

The ones in the picture were made with syrup - treacle is actually more traditional - and darker. Also, as it was a standard cake for working families to put into the 'lunch box', it works just as well with white sugar - but white sugar and syrup would give a paler cake.




Date: 10/12/2013 01:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanthinegirl.livejournal.com
I think I'll try and make that tomorrow! I have a christmas party wednesday and that would be perfect! I love the more cake like gingerbread, but you don't see it much around here. I'll have to use molasses though as I don't have (or actually know exactly what it is) golden syrup or treacle.

Date: 10/12/2013 08:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] curiouswombat.livejournal.com
I'm pretty sure that molasses and treacle are very, very, similar, so you'd get a nice dark gingerbread.

If you want to pretty up plain gingerbread for Christmas events, a little water icing (the sort where you just add water to the icing sugar/confectioners sugar) drizzled over the top and then a handful of chopped crystallised ginger looks good, or the icing and some sort of edible gold decorations.

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