Nutty Fruity Gingerbread recipe
The fruit peel and nuts make this gingerbread into more of a dessert. This recipe makes very moist gingerbread, absolutely perfect for teaming with warm thick custard.
Ingredients:
- 275g black treacle
- 225 unsalted butter
- 225g plain flour
- 225g wholemeal flour
- 100g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 250ml beer
- 1 tbsp. ground ginger
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp. ground cloves
- ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
- 70g raisins
- 100g chopped mixed peel
- 50g chopped almonds
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
- Line and grease the insides of a 23cm round cake tin.
- Roughly mix together the flours, spices, and bicarb.
- In a separate bowl, cream together the sugar, treacle, and butter. Beat the eggs into this mixture, one at a time, then beat in the beer. Mix the wet and dry mixtures together.
- Stir in the mixed peel, nuts, and raisins.
- Bake this mixture for 40 minutes, and serve!
I know this sounds strange, using the beer, but it creates a wonderfully moist gingerbread with a fantastic smell. Imagine the scents of Christmas rolled into one yummy pudding, and you’ve got this gingerbread.
Spicy Gingerbread Biscuits recipe
This is a lovely easy recipe to do with the children. Cut out your biscuits using a man-shaped cookie cutter and go to town with the icing. These are also perfect left to cool and set, then wrapped in a little cellophane bag for Christmas presents.
Ingredients:
- 250g plain flour
- 125ml treacle
- 100g caster sugar
- 100g unsalted butter
- 1 egg yolk
- Pinch of salt
- ½ tsp. baking powder
- ½ tsp. bicarbonate of soda
- ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground cloves
- 1 tsp. ground ginger
- ½ tsp. ground nutmeg
Directions:
- Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Add the treacle and mix again. Add the egg yolk in and give a final mix until thoroughly combined.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarb, spices and salt into a separate bowl. Combine the sugary treacle mixture with the flour mixture until smooth. Don’t overwork this or your biscuits will be the wrong texture.
- Chill this mixture in the fridge for at least an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Grease a couple of baking trays.
- Flour your work surfaces and get the dough out of the fridge. Roll it out to about half a centimeter in thickness and cut out your shapes.
- Place these at least 5cm away from each other on your baking trays – this will make sure you don’t get molded together gingerbread men.
- Bake these for around 8 to 10 minutes in an oven.
- Leave them to cool before the icing on a wire cooling rack. If you try and ice whilst the men are still warm, however tempting it is, the icing will slide off and melt and you’ll be left with a big mess.
These are delicious dunked in a cup of tea or coffee and will last a good few weeks in an airtight container.
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