07 March 2011

old-fashioned ginger

We all have favourite flavours, some old and tied to childhood memories and others new, associated with developing tastes, trends or culinary experimentation.  I, for example, have been on a coriander kick for a few years now.  Not, strictly speaking, new, but in the scheme of 27 years...  A flavour though that has been a favourite of mine since the days of pinafores and leather T-bar shoes is ginger, and a favourite it is likely to remain. 

Think back to childhood - gingernuts, ginger gems, ginger crunch (how good is THAT still, especially with the current trend for adding pistachios, wicked).  Mum used to make amazing gingerbread cakes (and still does, for which I am very grateful!), Fran made ginger munch (our take on crunch) and the first biscuits I learned to make, after chocolate chips (I think that's the obligatory first), were ginger snaps.  Over the years I've used various ginger biscuit recipes from several books, but none matched those ones from the 80s...until now.  Thanks to stumbling across the kiwi-based foodies' site foodlovers.co.nz I have found a recipe to recreate those gingery, crisp, wafer-thin (well, fat-wafer-thin) discs of delight.  Feel free to double the ginger!
 
125 g butter
250 g sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
250 g flour
  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
  2. Cream together butter and sugar until pale and creamy.  Add egg, syrup and spices and mix well. 
  3. Stir in remaining ingredients. 
  4. Place teaspoonfuls onto greased tray, flatten and bake for 10-12 minutes (watch after ten as they cook pretty quick).  Allow room for spreading. 
  5. Remove onto cooling rack - they crisp up once cool.  Yum!!  Makes about 35 or so biscuits.   

1 comment:

  1. Yay for pinafores and t-bar shoes :) These biscuits sound so good. I never used to like ginger as a kid (the flavour, not Ms Rogers, who is awesome) but have come round to it in a big way.

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