Sunday, April 25, 2021

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Ginger biscuits, by JD

As we pass into a second year of lockdown, JD has an alternative to banana bread.


These ginger biscuits are better than anything I have found in any shop - they are softer than the concrete hard shop bought ones and if you dunk them for too long they are laible to dissolve into a gingery flavoured tea which is not necessarily a design fault!

I grew up in a household where my mother was an expert cook who would produce a seemingly endless supply of scones, cakes, biscuits, sundry pastries etc.

Cookery programmes on TV have been popular for a long time so why are ready meals and home delivered fast foods so prevalent? Is it laziness or is cookery now a spectator sport with TV having turned it into a competitive activity. No matter, Richard Ingrams was right all those years ago with his quip that fast food was called that because it was not worth waiting for.

My natural curiosity and desire to have a go at various activities led me naturally to try biscuit making and not only was I rather good at it but there is something very satisfying about conjuring up tasty biscuits and then dunking them in a cuppa char!

So herewith my mother's recipe for ginger biscuits. Cheap and cheerful and easy to make!

Ingredients

4 oz. margarine (you can use butter if you wish for a richer taste)
3 oz. sugar
2 generous tablespoons syrup (usually Tate&Lyle golden syrup)
6 oz. self-raising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
a pinch of bicarbonate

Directions
  • Melt margarine and sugar in a saucepan over a low heat; add the syrup.
  • Sieve the flour, ginger and bicarb in a bowl, then add the melted mix of syrup etc.
  • Mix well until stiff (the mixture stiffens as it cools) then form into small balls, about 1" or so in diameter. Place these on a greased baking tray and leave a good space between them.
  • Bake at gas mark 5 for 12-15 mins., or until the required shade of ginger.
- Eat and enjoy!

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Ed.: for those who prefer French Revolutionary units here are the ingredients in metric:

113 grammes margarine/butter
85 grammes sugar
c. 30 millilitres syrup
170 grammes self-raising flour
7.5 millilitres ground ginger
un pinch de bicarbonate

2 comments:

MrMC said...

Makes change from ginger princes, not cheap and rarely cheerful

MrMC said...

I tried making some viennese style biscuits last week and, for once, preheated the oven, I only found out later that the wife had put some platic handled sauepans in there. so have invented a new biscuit with the delicate flavours of burnt plastic