Alice was due to return to nursery today, but this has been put on hold by a nasty cough and cold so, to help keep ourselves warm on this perishing day, we did a bit of baking. Using an easy recipe taken from my trusted Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book, I managed to keep our young lady amused for a while.
350g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (I used baking powder instead as I'm out of bicarb)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
100g margarine (I used butter)
175g light muscovado sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 egg, beaten
Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5 and lightly grease a couple of large baking trays.
Alice helped me measure out the flour, baking powder and ginger into a large bowl. Once I added the butter, roughly chopped, she and I rubbed it into the dry ingredients which she enjoyed as it was "a bit messy". Alice then stirred in the sugar. As I spooned in the golden syrup she kept asking to taste it as it slowly drizzled into the bowl. The beaten egg went in after this and I took over for a while, stirring everything together, before we both kneaded the dough. As this recipe makes quite a large quantity, half the dough was put in the freezer for another time. On the floured table we then rolled out the dough to a thickness of about 5mm and Alice cut out the men, while I worked on the women (we have two cutters). She was starting to lose interest by this point but, as they only needed 10–12 minutes in the oven, she was soon fired up to see (and taste) the end results.
The gingerbread biscuits were a big hit – with a nice balance of mellow spice and sweetness. The only problem is that, unless you remove them quickly from the baking tray, they soon harden up and some will end up decapitated. You can see from the picture that we made a large batch using only half the dough (but our cutters are smallish at about 8cm long).
No comments:
Post a Comment