Woodfired Gingerbread
This gingerbread recipe is great for using up the falling heat in your wood fired oven after you’ve cooked something else at a higher heat. It’s very straightforward and the ingredients are pretty much storecupboard ones so nothing too difficult to find. It also keeps very well and in fact seems to improve on keeping. Do try it – we think you’ll like it. If you haven’t got a wood fired oven, don’t worry – bake it in your normal oven at 190C. If you haven’t got an oven at all (David and Nicky, this is for you!!), scroll to the bottom and follow the method for frying pan gingerbread drop scones.
Happy cooking everyone
David and Hollyx
Ingredients
120g molasses or black treacle
120g butter
120g light Muscavado Sugar
250g plain flour
1tbsp ground ginger
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
120g milk (we weigh milk and water – much easier than peering at the side of a measuring jug; 1ml = 1g)
2 eggs
120g Raisins, soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes and drained
Method
- Put the butter, sugar and molasses in a pan and gently melt together.
- Mix the flour, spices and bicarb together, bashing out any lumps.
- Whisk the eggs with the milk.
- Line a 20cm square cake tin with baking parchment.
- Mix everything together to make a batter and pour the battter in the tin.
- Put the tin in the oven with the door shut at about 5 Mississippi
- Leave to bake in the oven for about 40 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean and the cake is firm on the top.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack and store in a tin. Serve warmed through with custard or ginger ice cream or at room temperature with Greek yoghurt and chopped stem ginger or just in a chunk at elevenses with a mug of coffee.
Alternatives
- Instead of light muscavado sugar, use dark muscavado, Demerara or caster sugar – they all work just fine
- Take out 50g of the plain flour and replace with 50g of wholemeal flour
- Drizzle over some lemon water icing if you want to decorate the cake; the zingy lemon goes really well with the spices
- If you haven’t got a wood fired oven, no problem; just bake the gingerbread in your regular oven at 190C
- If you have no oven, here’s what we would do – halve the recipe but separate the egg. Mix everything together as above except for the egg white. Whisk the egg white until it’s holding its own shape. Fold this into the batter mix. Use this batter in a lightly greased frying pan to make drop scones from the gingerbread batter. Put spoonfuls of the batter in the pan and cook for about 2 minutes each side and eat while still warm.
Do let us know how you get on
Happy baking
David and Hollyx