BAKE-OFF!

You know you've been waiting for this moment...when I pull out all of the stops and bake with reckless abandon in the name of the New Scotland Dance Society Fresher's Weekend trip to Braemar, in the Highlands. But you've not been as excited as I have, so let me dust the flour off my camera, rub the butter off the screen, upload those photos, and get started!

Today's festivities are brought to you by The National Trust, with Laura Mason (I believe you've been introduced), and presenting, for the first time in blog, Sarah Edington (see left).

Now, I have long been a big fan of all things ginger. My favorite cookies served at school are "ginger molasses cookies - vegan", served on Thursdays in one of the dining halls. We have a family recipe (compliements of William Sonoma's Baker's Essentials) that is even better, featuring soft, chewy chunks of crystallized ginger and a strong molasses overtone. But nothing beats straight up gingerbread. Potent, spicy, sometimes soft and sometimes crisp...

It is therefore the bane of my existance that gingerbread in the States is generally confined to the winter holiday season. Finding fresh (none of that pre-packaged, thank you very much!) gingerbread outside of Thanksgiving/Christmas is all but impossible, so imagine my surprise when I arrived in Britain and found gingerbread...everywhere! Cookies (or biscuits, if you will), breads, cakes - you name it, it comes in the gingerbread variety year-round (in fact, when I mentioned to two of my friends here that gingerbread is considered seasonal in the states, they stared at me as if I had gone mad). I particularly fell hard and fast for a variety of tea bread called Yorkshire Parkin (a frozen loaf waits in my freezer for Halloween morning).

Sorry, I'm not here to write about Yorkshire Parkin, however, as biscuits feed more than tea loaves and when a call went out for bakers to stand forth, numbers were the first thing on my mind. Hmmm...thirty to fifty people? And two new cookbooks? Gingerbread not seasonal? There's no contest there. I dove into the Complete Traditional Recipe Book (see, I'm not crazy for calling them recipe books instead of cook books!) and Farmhouse Cookery hunting for gingerbread recipes. I found 'em, too - more than I could use. So I selected three to start with, hunted down the ingredients (not an easy task), woke up early and started baking.

Notice that it's still dark in the first picture? That's not an artifact of the angle...And here's my *very* humble workspace:

(That's about true to size, too)

Now, turn to p. 274 of Edington's book and you find:

Northumbrian Ginger and Cinnamon Biscuits

"These are similar (except for the cinnamon) to the Cornish Fairings on page 277 - crisp biscuits are favourites everywhere. This recipe comes from the other end of England."

[Apparently, I'm going to have to try these Cornish Fairings...]

170 g (6 oz) butter [rough translation for the American - 12 Tbs. Yes, you read that right. 12.]

170 g (6 oz) sugar

1 Tbs golden syrup

350 g (12 oz) plain flour sifted with:

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

(Makes about 30 biscuits)

(If you're wondering, this is what golden syrup looks like. It's a stunning amber color and not something to let your children play with - you'll be cleaning the kitchen for hours. It's worse than molasses)

Okay, paraphrased, preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit and grease a baking sheet. Melt the butter and golden syrup in a saucepan, add sugar [the original calls for melting the butter, sugar and golden syrup in the saucepan, but as you've probably guessed by now, taken literally, that probably wouldn't be such a good idea. Melted sugar = candy and third-degree burns, not biscuits]. Add the flour, baking soda, ginger and cinnamon and mix well [I didn't mix well enough and ended up with pretty swirls of cinnamon in the finished product].

The dough will seem dry and crumbly, a bit like if you had cut butter into flour, but coherent. There's no additional liquid, so make sure the butter is really well distributed (I have a picture, but I couldn't get it to rotate...).

At this point, the recipe calls for "rolling small amounts of the mixture in your hands to form balls, approximately the size of a large walnut. Place these well apart n the baking sheet and flatten the top slightly of each one. Bake approximately 10-15 minutes until golden.".

With all due respect to Sarah Edington, I don't think this is how the cookies were meant to be baked (of course, I found this out retrospectively). You see, the recipe is very similar to the third one I tried today, and that one called for rolling the dough to 5mm (very thin) and cutting the biscuits. When I bake them again, that's how I'll be doing these, or else they look messy, like the ones below:

Uncooked Flattened by hand In a ball

They turn out delightfully crunchy and spicy, but without rolling, no matter how much you try to flatten them by hand, they're going to be too thick (which makes them too much of a mouthful), and lumpy (they don't change shape as they bake). Lesson learned (deliciously!).

Now turn over to p. 255:

Grantham Gingerbreads

"Grantham Gingerbreads were first created in 1740 when a local baker in Grantham, Lincolnshire, while making a flat, hard biscuit for travellers called Grantham Whetstones, added a raising agent the mixture by mistake. Since then, Grantham has taken its gingerbreads to its heart. It is know as 'the gingerbread town' and its local football team are known as 'The Gingerbreads'."

100 g (4 oz) butter

350 g (12 oz) sugar

1 egg, beaten

2-3 tsp ground ginger

250 g (9 oz) self-raising flour

(Makes about 30 biscuits)

[You've got to appreciate these biscuits for how few ingredients are involved. Talk about a college student's best friend!]

"Preheat the oven to 280 Fahrenheit. Grease a large baking tray. Beat the butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon to soften it, then work in the sugar followed by the beaten egg. Sift the ground ginger into the flour and add to the mixture, which will be quite dry and crumbly - a bit like shortbread."

Actually, not nearly as dry as the previous recipe. It comes together really nicely.

"Using your hands, bring the mixture together into about thirty small balls the size of a walnut[...]"

"...and place on the baking tray, leaving plenty of space between each one [She's not kidding about this...the unexpected happened while it was in the oven - see below]. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes. The gingerbreads should remain pale in colour and have a texture and appearance rather like a macaroon."

They turn the prettiest shade of pale gold. Think Bella-colored (like a good cup of strong black tea!)

But don't be deceived by how puffy these look! I bit into one expecting a soft, chewy cookie and was met by an unexpected, satisfying crunch. It's snappier than any gingersnap I've ever had (if less spicy), but instead of being flat, the self-rising flour creates a lot of void spaces on the inside. Flick it - it sounds like flicking glass or slate.

Moving on now to our most involved biscuit, we change over to Mason's Farmhouse Cookery, p. 158:

Ginger Biscuit Mixture for Parkin Pigs

"Another recipe from Littondale. Around 5 November, this type of mixture was used for making ginger pigs which were always known as parkin pigs."

Really, I should be making these biscuits in two weeks on the 5th of November, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, when all of the UK is lit up by bonfires and fireworks (already appearing on Tesco shelves, get your Starmageddon Sparklers now!) in memory of Guy Fawkes, the hero?/traitor? who in 1605 nearly succeeded in carrying out the Gunpowder Plot and blowing up the British Parliament. But to start getting us in the mood -

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot

I see no reason why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

(Makes around 25 parkin pigs or 50 conventional biscuits - I'm going with the latter because a) I don't have a pig biscuit cutter, and b) the conventional shape feeds more)

120 g / 4 oz granulated sugar

60 g / 2 o butter

120 g / 4 oz golden syrup

250 g / 9 oz plain flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground ginger

1-2 Tbs milk

currants (optional depending on if you're making pigs or not)

"Put the sugar, butter and syrup in a pan and set them over a low heat. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and ginger in a bowl. When the butter and syrup mixture is melted, add to the dry ingredients and stir well."

Add a little milk, just enough to make a coherent dough. Dust a work surface with [a lot of] flour and roll out to a thickness of 1/4 in [the dough will at first seem slightly tacky to work with because of the large quantity of golden syrup, but as it cools, it will feel drier and "more normal". Make sure to use a lot of flour on the work surface, the top of the dough, and grease the rolling pin, though, or it'll stick and tear like nobody's business]. [If desired], cut out pig shapes and give each a currant eye."

Do you like my trusty "rolling pin" peanut butter jar up there just above the dough?

"Bake on greased trays at 350 Farenheit for about 8 minutes (keep an eye on them, they scorch easily). Allow to cool a little bofre removing them with a spatula to a wire rack".

Is your mouth watering yet?

So, I went through this whole production trying the different recipes just to determine which I prefer. Here's my analysis:

Northumbrian ginger and cinnamon biscuits : Big points for flavor, and a nice crunch (but not crispy), almost shortbread-like texture. Not so good on the presentation, but that can be cleared up by rolling and cutting the dough.

Grantham Gingerbreads : Beautiful, picture-perfect cookies! Satifying crisp and crystalline texture! A little too sweet and not enough spice.

Parkin "Pigs" : Almost too much crisp with a decent amount of cruch. More prominent spice than Grantham Gingerbreads, but not as much as the Northumbrian biscuits. Brown evenly - would be nice decorated. Look like they should be softer, like rolled sugar cookies.

I think I'll leave it there and let you determine which is the best for youself - they are all superb biscuits (some more typical gingerbread than others...).

On an interesting sidenote: According to Kate Colquhon in Taste: The Store of Britain Through Cooking, gingerbread originated in Medieval England as a subtlety, or dish served in between main courses. It was comprised of honey, ginger, breadcrumbs and saffron and baked in a large round biscuit. Originally, it was called marchpane. Yes, that should look familiar - during the reign of the Tudors, the gingerbread dish of the Medieval period evolved into a paste of crushed almonds, sugar and rosewater, used to craft decorations for dishes.