I had foolishly promised one of my work
mates some form of ginger baking for today. This was a foolish
promise because I hadn't really planned how I would fit baking into
my evening – there were a lot of chores that needed doing. On the
plus side baking is preferable to chores. My services were also to be
called upon for a rehearsal of an imminent best-men speech (yes,
there are two of them).
I fancied doing some sort of biscuits
and had a browse of my recipe books. There were loads of recipes for
different types of ginger biscuits so I opted for what seemed to be
the easiest, involving the fewest ingredients, from one of my most
trusted recipe books: gingerbread men. Thus far I'd managed one chore
– putting away the groceries that had just arrived from a large
internet order. I decided that in order to achieve my chore goals I'd
need to do some multi-tasking so put a load of washing on before
starting work on the baking.
The recipe said to melt 2 tablespoons
of black treacle with 50g of butter and 15ml of milk. Thinking about
it now I'm not sure that the milk is really necessary but the book
has “dairy” in the title so I think they're keen to get as many
farmyard products in as possible. I have found that it's very
difficult to accurately measure any type of treacle or syrup product
in any units apart from grams (or another actual weight I suppose).
This was further complicated because the recipe seemed to indicate
that 2 tablespoons of black treacle is equivalent 60ml. As far as I'm
concerned one tablespoon is 15ml (no matter what the substance), so I
was confused. I wasn't about to start working out the density of
black treacle so I just went with 2 big dollops of black treacle.
While that was melting I mixed together
100g plain flour, 50g sugar (soft brown) and 1 (generous) teaspoon of
ground ginger.
The next instruction was to mix the
treacle mixture into the dry ingredients until it formed a soft ball.
Once I'd thoroughly mixed the two sets of ingredients it resembled
nothing like a soft ball. It was more of a sludgy cake mixture. In
retrospect perhaps I should have just beaten in an egg and turned it
into a cake but in my mind I was committed to gingerbread men. So I
added a bit more flour in the hope of turning the sludge into a soft
ball. After several additions of flour (just a little at a time) I
worried that the ginger would be losing its potency so I added
another shake of this. With a few more little additions of flour my
soft ball finally formed.
The final part of the pre-bake was
surprisingly uneventful. I rolled out to about half a centimetre and
then cut out both men and lady shapes (with a clever double-sided
cutter that I had acquired from my mum). They baked for about 10
minutes at 180°C
and came out looking remarkably like gingerbread men and ladies.
Gingerbread
men and ladies aren't the same without decoration. The recipe had
said to apply currants for eyes, nose, buttons etc before baking but
we didn't have any currants and sultanas were too big. So I decided
to risk some post-baking icing. Icing is not my strong point.
Cautious to avoid my usual mistake of making it too runny I tipped a
load of icing sugar into a bowl and very slowly added water, just
half a teaspoon at a time. It's on occasions like these that I would
like to own some food colouring. But I don't, so we would have to
make do with all white features. I was not about to start using a
piping – this would require my full concentration and by now I was
in full swing with the best men speech. Instead I applied the icing
with a cocktail stick (or tooth pick if you prefer) and finished off
with a few silver balls.
I
don't think they were the greatest gingerbread men and ladies ever
made – slightly on the tough side – but my colleagues were very
polite and said that they enjoyed them and no-one lost any teeth.
Even
still, next time I'm going to try a different recipe. And maybe I'll
invest in some food colouring.
(In
case you were wondering the best men speech went down very well).
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