Traditional Gingerbread- My Great British Bake Off Antidote

Much to my children’s delight, conkers are here too

I am paranoid about running out of these!

Melt over a low heat

The dry ingredients

Add the dry followed by eggs and milk

THE most homely smell

Warm…..mmmmmmm

Vaguely equal portions

A lovely lunchbox surprise

–

In my last post (An Open Letter To The Great British Bake Off) , I unleashed a certain amount of wrath at the way certain TV shows make home- baking a daunting, time- consuming, over ambitious, sensationalised affair. I had a little rant about my favourite show, The Great British Bake Off showing signs of becoming little more than a middle class reality show. Worse than that, I am worried that unnecessarily complicated techniques, ingredients and recipes that take hours and hours to produce will actually put people off baking. Home- baking should be an “every day” easy, simple, wholesome affair. That is something Mary Berry used to stand for and why her books have been my bible.

I had particular issues with the way the Great British Bake Off dealt with the humble traybake. A traybake should be a simple, easy but delicious bake to share with friends or family. It should be possible to whip up a traybake in an evening, from store cupboard ingredients, when your daughter comes home from school announcing that the school cake sake is TOMORROW and she has promised to bring in LOTS OF MUMMIES CAKES!

So, here is my favourite traybake recipe. Its easy. Its unbelievably simple so you can taste each ingredient in harmony with each other. It is large but keeps amazingly well for a good week. In fact, traditional gingerbread improves over a few days. Apart from that initial stolen corner whilst its still on a cooling rack, I don’t eat it until it is about 3 days old. The texture and flavour develop incredibly. My husband is addicted to this cake, it is probably his all time favourite.

The warm blend of ginger and spices make this a perfect autumnal bake. When there is a nip in the morning air, or better still a good frost, this is THE perfect walking snack with hot tea.

Appropriately, this recipe is adapted from Mary Berry’s “Gingerbread Traybake” in “Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book”. Mary adds an icing made from icing sugar and crystallised stem ginger. Whilst this would undoubtedly make the squares more saleable at a fete, it is the fussier option. I have made several iced versions but for me, the beauty of this recipe is its simplicity and the way it improves with time and keeps so well. The iced version does not keep nearly so well.

Ingredients

225 g soft margarine (I use Stork)

275 g golden syrup

275 g black treacle

225 g light muscovado sugar

450 g self raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp mixed spice

4 tbsp milk

4 large eggs, beaten

Tin

Grease and line a 30 x 23 cm tin. I use a brownie tin.

Oven

Pre-heat the oven to 160C (150C Fan)? Gas Mark 3.

Method

1. Weigh the golden syrup, treacle, sugar and margarine into a large saucepan. If possible use flat scales and weigh these ingredients straight into the pan to avoid extra sticky washing up.

2. Melt these ingredients over a low heat, stirring from time to time until the margarine has completely melted.

3. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the flour and spices (using an electric hand mixer), followed by the eggs and milk. You will have a glossy, quite runny mixture.

4. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 45 minutes. The traybake is ready when it is well risen and firm to touch.

5. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

6. Store in an airtight container. I use a large tupperware container and I recommend NOT cutting into squares to store but rather storing the traybake whole and cutting squares off when you need them (unless of course the traybake is destined for a cake sale).