Gingerbread Cake

Recently when I was house sitting at my cousin's farm, I stumbled across this fantastic old recipe book. Hand typed, milk splattered and torn, it was a delight to flip through it's thin, worn pages while enjoying a cup of tea. I love the homely recipes proudly contributed by the community. Each persons name in bold type, next to a favourite family recipe.

I love books like this and have a few on my own shelf; my old kindy cookbook and others that I have discovered in op shops or have been given by friends. I love the collaboration from the community of home cooks that go into a book like this. I think about how invaluable the recipes and tips were to other families during a time when people did not have 50 cookbooks on their own shelves or the Internet at their fingertips for recipes and advice.

But most of all I love the names of the recipes:

three minute cake
salmon whirls
Esther's lazy daisy cake
my biscuits
spaghetti cheese flan
tuna medley
Chinese mince
Hawaiian curried eggs
lamb dinner in a bag
quick sponge roly pudding
fish fillets elegance
baked bean casserole
economical lemon butter
jam sauce 1 and jam sauce 2

Laugh all you want. Perhaps spaghetti cheese flan may not be to my taste, but there are some fantastic basic recipes in these old books. I often turn to them for cakes, slices, biscuits and jams. Once you work out the oven temperatures and the cake tin size (as these things are rarely listed) you usually discover a very good recipe.

Which is why I am so glad that my cousin loaned me her book so I could bring it home to cook this yummy gingerbread cake. It has fast become a staple in our house.












Gingerbread cake

makes one loaf cake

• 165 grams unsalted butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 3/4 cup golden syrup
• 1 egg
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
• 1 dessertspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 cup milk

to serve

• sifted icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease and line a 5 x 9 inch loaf tin. In a large bowl beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the syrup and mix well. Beat in the egg and then sift in the dry ingredients. Slowly stir in the milk until well combined. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 1 hour. Once cooled, sprinkle with sifted icing sugar.

I like to make this the day before to develop the flavour, but it is usually half eaten by day two in our house.

I write this as if I have been cooking this recipe for years, in fact I have only had the book for 2 weeks. So popular it is this cake in our house that I have cooked it three times already. Don't worry, we have been sharing it.