Recipe: Gingerbread with Lemon and Blueberries

What I like about this time of year is the cakes. This is the time for heavier cakes, for gingerbreads and fruit cakes, for spices and treacle. For all the things that taste of Christmas. (I know, a bit early for that, but now’s the time to be baking for Christmas, to give the cakes time to mature and bring out all the flavours.)

This recipe for gingerbread comes from allrecipes.co.uk, though Delia also has a fantastic recipe. The icing and decoration was not in the original recipe: it is optional, or you can decorate as you prefer.

You will need:

100g caster sugar

125g butter

1 egg

225ml treacle

300g plain flour + 1-2 tsps bicarb of soda/300g self-raising flour

Spices: ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves

250ml hot water

I also added chopped root ginger.

To make:

The oven wants to be at 180C/Gas Mark 4. You’ll need to grease and line a cake tin.

Cream together the sugar and butter. Mix in the egg and then the treacle.

Sift together the flour, bicarb, and spices. Add to the treacle mix and stir well. Chuck in any chunks of ginger. Stir in the hot water.

Pour in tin and bake for about an hour/until a skewer comes out clean.

For Lemon Cream Cheese icing:

Mix cream cheese with icing sugar to taste and stir in a couple of drips of lemon juice.

Decorate with blueberries.