(Almost) According to Mrs Crocombe: Gingerbread Cake

After Delia’s Jamaican Gingerbread, I was going to make Mrs Crocombe’s gingerbread biscuits.

But the recipe calls for a quarter of an egg, and I can’t, at this present, think what to do with the remaining three-quarters, so I’m putting that off until I can. Instead, I turned to her gingerbread cake, with adaptations. The addition of stem and crystallised ginger, for one.

I also reduced the quantity of treacle from 500g to 454g, because that’s the size of a tin of treacle and I really couldn’t be bothered to work out how many tablespoons, roughly, the final 46g would be. And who wants to buy two tins for the sake of 46g?

I think further experimentation is required, as my brownie tin was a tad small for this quantity of mixture, because the outside is particularly well done, and there’s a nice layer in the middle which is still a bit squidgy. Probably I should have used my biggest cake tin. Never mind: it tastes good anyway.

You will need

200g salted butter

200g brown sugar

1 tbsp ground ginger

2 large eggs, beaten

500g plain flour

454g [1 tin] black treacle

1 tsp bicarb of soda

A little warm milk

Crystallised and/or stem ginger [I used both, because I have them both]

To make

Cream the butter, sugar and ground ginger. Add the eggs, mixing well. Add in the flour a little at a time, and mix well between each addition. Pour in the treacle as you go. Use a bit of warm water to get the last of the treacle.  Add the bicarb to the warm milk before pouring into the rest of the mix. Stir well.

If adding chopped ginger, add it now and stir through.

Once the mixture is smooth, pour into a greased and lined tin and bake for about an hour at 180C.