not yet a man

52. Gingerbread

Saturday will be my last day with my grade five tutoring class. I told them I'd bring them some sort of cake. A few of the girls requested gingerbread and no one objected so I thought, Why not? It's in Larousse Gastronomique. It's a basic recipe. The girls then went on to describe the various things I could fashion out of gingerbread--dwellings, men--but I told them I'd just be making a loaf. I don't have sheet pans and I don't have the sort of artsy-fartsy skill required to engineer cake structures.

I doubled the quantities in the recipe because I have 30 students. So, I ended up having to ...

Combine:

• 200 grams of margarine
• 400 grams of black treacle

I heated this on the stove then mixed in:

• 300 mL milk

The treacle mixture was added to a bowl that already contained:

•  400 grams plain flour
• 100 grams brown sugar
• 4 tsp powdered ginger
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg and star anise)

I then added:

• 4 whole eggs

I poured the batter into two loaf pans and put them in a 150 degree oven for 90 minutes.

What can be said about the end result? It's gingerbread. It's rich. There's sweetness from the treacle and spiciness from the ginger and cinnamon. It'd go well with vanilla icecream, which I don't happen to have at the moment.