Chewy Triple Ginger Cookies

These are for the ginger lovers in the house.

My older girl had been on to me to make hideous looking goblin biscuits, AKA green gingerbread men, for Halloween last year. The recipe came from her hideous (IMHO) Rainbow Fairies Annual. I was going to use my fail-safe ginger bread recipe, which I've shared here before, but decided she'd enjoy the whole thing more if she read the recipe aloud from the book as we went.

So the kiddies had their lurid green goblins, and I adapted the other half of the mix to be adult-friendly, by upping the ginger and adding stem ginger chunks - and shaping as proper cookies.

Rather than bake a big batch, what I recommend is to make up the dough, and keep it wrapped in the fridge in cling film (saran wrap) and bake a fresh batch every couple of days as they go quite soggy on the day after they're cooked. Fresh from the oven they are crisp and chewy and very moreish

Preheat oven to 180C Fan

120g butter (melted)

1 egg (beaten)
270g plain flour

2 tsp dried ground ginger

8-12 lumps of preserved stem ginger in syrup chopped into small chunks - depending on size and your love of ginger!

2 tbsp golden syrup

2 tbsp syrup from the ginger jar

1  tsp baking soda (sieved)

170g light brown soft sugar

Mix the butter, sugar, ground ginger and syrups together well. Add half the flour, then the beaten egg, and the other half of the flour. Add the chopped ginger. Mix to combine, knead for a minute with your hands. Form into a log, the diametre you want your cookies.

Slice into 1 cm thick slices, place on a lined baking tray - do not over crowd - squash them slightly thinner with your hands.

Bake for 10 mins until rich golden, be sure the edges don't go dark brown or they will be bitter. Cool for 2-3 mins on the tray to harden slightly, then remove and cool on a wire rack. Best eaten warm!

Soft Soul-warming Ginger Cake

It is wild and windy outside with horizontal rain. It feels more like November than March - can you believe it's nearly Easter?! I was in need of something soul-warming, and body-warming, and this ginger cake did the trick. And I love it twice as much because it's a one pot cake - there's something very satisfying about having minimal washing up after baking!

It's really soft and springy and light as a feather, surprising for so little raising agent. It's quite different to  my  more sticky, solid Jamaican Ginger cake, that I like to eat with butter - that one improves with a couple of days wrapped in foil to mature, whereas this is heaven hot from the tin. You could ice this with a simple lemon water icing if you want, as Nigella suggests in her original recipe which I adapted heavily form How to be a Domestic Goddess, but I prefer without  - and to be honest, there's way to much sugar in it to start with!

150g butter
100g dark muscavado sugar
200g golden syrup
170g black treacle
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp dried ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
250ml full fat milk
3 medium eggs, briefly beaten
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda dissolved in the milk
300 g plain flour

Preheat oven to 160 C fan.
1 swiss roll/ brownie tin (25x 15) and one large loaf tin. Or a roasting tin 30x20 (in which case you may need to cook it an extra 10 mins) lined with baking parchment.

Melt the butter, syrup, treacle, sugar, gingers and cinnamon over  a low heat. When melt removed from heat and stir in the milk and bicarb, then eggs, and finally flour. It will be a very runny batter. Pour into the lined tins and cook for 30-45 mins until light and springy, and a skewer comes out clean. Keep an eye on it after 20 mins to be sure it doesn't catch on top.

Delicious warm but keeps very well for 10 days.

Jamaican Ginger Cake

Who can resist the warm, dark stickiness of a traditional ginger cake? I find it impossible to eat less than half a loaf! I was brought up on the shop bought variety, and always presumed they would not be repeatable at home. How wrong I was. This is simplicity itself to make: melt down the sugars and butter, before stirring in the flour. As someone who has to avoid chocolate for long period because of migraines, this cake is as close as you can get to replacing the sticky goo of a great chocolate cake. It doesn't have much butter in the recipe, nor does it have an icing. So I make up for that scandalous lack of fat calories but slathering it richly in golden salty butter. This is one of those cakes that gets better after a couple of days wrapped in foil. That's if you can resist it hot out of the oven.

This recipe is adapted from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's supreme book: Everyday, which I have been cooking my way through this winter.

Preheat oven to 180C

75 g butter
100g dark brown sugar
200g golden syrup
2 tbsp the syrup from a jar of preserved stem ginger and a little more reserved for later
75 ml dark or spiced rum (I used Captain Morgans)
2 medium eggs lightly beaten
225g self raising flour
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
75 g preserved stem ginger (in syrup), finely chopped.

1 large loaf tin (2lbs/ 1 litre) lined with baking parchment.

Melt the butter, syrups and sugar gently in a pan. Remove from the heat and leave to cool a little. Then stir in the rum, eggs and flour.

Pour into the tin and cook for 40-50mins. Check regularly after 20 mins and if it is looking like the top is getting too dark, cover it with foil. It is cooked when a skewer comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Christmas Traditions: Our Simple Gingerbread House

One of our Christmas traditions is making a gingerbread house. We never had gingerbread houses in my childhood, but I loved the magic of them in stories of Hansel and Gretel: an edible house, covered in sweets - the food of every child's dreams.

This is a quick, simple melt-it-down, one pan method for yummy gingerbread, which I originally got from a kids' TV show! I have adapted it a little, but it's still super simple.

My children range from 2-7 and all helped in all the processes bar one. Sticking the house together with molten toffee is an adult's only job. Please be careful! I manage to burn myself every year!

We decorate it all together, so it is homely rather than super-fancy, but if it was too pretty we wouldn't want to eat it, and that's half the fun! My children love making it as much as eating it. It gets softer and chewier the longer it is left out. We usually admire ours for a couple of days before demolishing it with friends for a festive tea party.

See my personal blog for the mayhem that ensued when we made ours this year: Those Infamous Words: Let's Make a Gingerbread House


Preheat oven to 180C

Gingerbread

100g butter
50g white sugar
50g soft brown sugar
200g golden syrup
400g self raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Toffee
150 g caster sugar

Icing
1 pack of royal icing mix or 300g icing sugar sieved and mixed to a thick icing with a little water (and a couple of drops of lemon extract)

To decorate - chocolate buttons, Smarties, dolly mixtures...

First make the gingerbread. Melt sugars, syrup and butter gently in a pan. Remove from the heat. Stir in flour and spices. Stir until combined.

Pour onto a non stick sheet of parchment. Roll out to about 2mm thick. Cut out.

You will need:
2 long walls 10 cm x 25 cm - you can cut doors and windows out of it now, or ice them on later.
2 end walls 10 cm wide with a triangle on top.
Two roof pieces 25cm x 8cm.
Chimney:four pieces 2cmx 4cm, cut a triangle out of the base of two so it  attaches to the roof.

Cook for 10-15 mins, keep a careful eye on them so they don't go too dark around the edges. Cool on a wire rack before icing. Un-iced they keep well for a couple of weeks in an airtight tin, and are crisp. Iced they keep fine but are soft.

Whilst they are cooling, melt the sugar for the toffee in a pan until it is light conker colour. (remember no kiddies involved here!) Do not stir! Take off heat as it will continue cooking. Plunge into a bowl or sink of cool water. Then quickly, but carefully, use a spoon and run a line of toffee down the inner edge of one of the long wall, super fast, attach a short wall to it. Do the same with the other two walls. Then the rooves, and then stick the chimney together in one piece before attaching it to the roof. If the toffee starts to cool and get too hard, just pop it on the heat for a couple of minutes to soften.

Then mix up the royal or water icing. Use a piping bag, or spoons to cover the roof, make snowy windows etc. Cover with sweets as you go. Chocolate buttons cut in half or overlapped make great roof tiles!

Banana and ginger cake - low fat cake!

Low fat cake seems an oxymoron. But here we have it. A soft, moist cake where the banana and buttermilk mean a reduction of 50% of the butter and 25% of the sugar. Great for breakfast, brunch or afternoon tea. Keeps well for a week.

Gingerbread robots

A quick, simple melt-it-down, one pan method for yummy gingerbread, which I originally got from a kids TV show! You don't have to make robots - how about hearts, men, planets, rabbits... or a gingerbread house.

Preheat oven to 180C

50g butter
20g white sugar
30g soft brown sugar
100g golden syrup
200g self raising flour
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Melt sugars, syrup and butter in a pan. Stir in flour and spices. Stir until combined.

Pour onto a non stick sheet of parchment. Roll out to about 3mm thick. Cut out. Cook for 10 mins, keep a careful eye on them so they don't go too dark around the edges. Cool on a wire rack before icing. Un-iced they keep well for a couple of weeks and are crisp. Iced they keep fine but are soft.

Ice with a water icing, (icing sugar mixed to a paste with a little water).