wash your language

  • All Posts
  • Publications
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Fairies at the Stone Circle
You are here: Home / Family / Nana’s Gingerbread

Nana’s Gingerbread

November 13, 2019 by EmmaP 2 Comments

I’ve been running a blog for a few years so maybe it’s no harm if I put up a baking recipe from time to time. I’ll warn you here, it’s no healthy, non-vegan, low-sugar snack but an old-fashioned treat that’s full of butter and sugar.

This is my mum’s gingerbread, which I decided to bake, out of the blue, last week, for the main purpose of giving the house a blast of of sticky sugar and spices for an afternoon.

When I told the kids I was making it they were sceptical. “It’s not like gingerbread cookies” I told them, as they were thinking of the Scandinavian-style cookies we often make at Christmas, in shapes of reindeer and star-jumping men, or occasionally the kind you glue together with icing sugar into a gingerbread house and later smash and eat.

This is a sticky, sugary and soft cake which has to be eaten with a cup of hot (not warm) tea. Of course, the kids loved it, and the husband, as did my workmates, and the under-12s football team after the 10am Saturday morning match. It goes a long way, this one recipe.

I have no idea where my mum got the recipe. I’ll never find out, as she’s been gone now over 5 years. She would have sent it to me years ago typed up in an email, the only bits of correspondence I have left from her during my many years abroad. I baked it during long winter evenings in Toronto and Nova Scotia and a few times, later on, in Oslo.

The instructions are pure Shigs (my mum’s childhood nickname, short for Sighle) – bare-boned and concise, to the point of being vague. Not for her details like size of pan, or method of combining ingredients or even length of cooking time. To be sure, I checked her handwritten recipe in her old recipe book that still sits in my Dad’s kitchen. He suggested I take it with me, but the two of us gasped at the idea.

Did she get it from her own mother, who died before I was born? Most likely. But it’s just one thing on the ever-expanding list of things I’d love to ask her, as I and the kids get older, to ask her about her own experiences of health changes, perceptions of the world, of driving kids to school matches and music lessons and to their sleepovers with new friends, slowly but surely moving off into their own lives.

She might be amazed to see me writing on my own blog, and her recipe but how else can I let a recipe like this die out if I don’t share it?

Nana’s Gingerbread

Looking at the old recipe, I’ve clearly updated it over the years. My key, authentic ingredients here are the treacle and golden syrup – cans of which I would actually bring back abroad after a trip home to Dublin. Sometimes. But you can substitute molasses for the treacle and most countries have their own form of light syrup (or just use honey). Brown sugar is also hard to come by but oh is it worth it!

Ingredients

  • 4oz treacle
  • 4oz golden (light) syrup
  • 8oz dark brown sugar (or light brown)
  • 1/4 pint (150ml) of olive oil or 6oz butter
  • 10oz white flour and 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 2 oz wholemeal flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 level teaspoons of ground ginger
  • 1/4 pint (150ml) mlik
  • 2 eggs

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 3, 180 degrees celsius
Line a tin 8 x 11 inches

  • Melt together in a heavy saucepan the treacle, syrup, sugar and oil (or butter) over a low heat so it doesn’t burn.
  • Mix together all the dry ingredients.
  • Beat the eggs and milk.
  • Mix the whole lot together, pour it into the pan.
  • Bake for 1 to 1-5 hours. Leave in tin to cool.
  • I have a note that says it’s better overdone than underdone, but I’m not sure about that.

Get the kettle on!

Filed Under: Family, Food, Ireland Tagged With: Baking, Gingerbread

Recent posts

  • The Accordion’s Tale June 29, 2023
  • Mothers on Buses July 8, 2022
  • The Wall of Pink Covid Hearts October 11, 2021

Comments

  1. Margaret says

    November 19, 2019 at 10:47 am

    A lovely recipe.
    I baked a batch at the weekend, divided it into two cake tins and reduced the baking time.
    Result was lovely rich, sticky, ginger cake bars, which went down very well at my daughters day-long sports tournament.
    Definitely a keeper, thanks for sharing.

  2. EmmaP says

    November 20, 2019 at 12:15 am

    Oh I’m so delighted to hear that! And to think the recipe will live on.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

A Blog and More

I write about language and the quirks of our family life in Dublin and previously in Italy and Norway. Read More…

RSS
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Tweet
Instagram

Instagram

Facebook

Cover for Wash Your Language
216
Wash Your Language

Wash Your Language

Musings on language and daily life in Ireland with memories from Canada, Italy and Norway

Wash Your Language

2 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Here's one from the archives - back before I had a dog, I'd spend many waking hours looking at other peoples' dogs. Whatever the breed. ... See MoreSee Less

Besotted by Bassets - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

It’s becoming a saga – this business of our family not yet having a dog. My elder daughter and I spend a lot of time discussing breeds and looking at other people’s dogs. Like this little fella ...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Ever feel like your day is full of cliches? Check out this piece written by my clever, fellow Dublin writer, Stephen Brady. -------At the crack of dawnI rose and shoneHad a breakfast of championsAnd blew out the stopsGrabbed the bull by the hornsAnd hit the streetTo meet and greetThe great unwashed;I wended my wayTo join the clubWaiting for the rubOf the greenTo set the sceneOf what might have been.I left no stone unturnedWhile the home fires burnedAnd the powers-that-beHad an air of mystery.But the empty vesselsMade an unholy noiseAnd the unstoppable forceMet the immoveable objectAnd the next thing I knewIt was an open-and-shut caseOf “we are where we are”where I was.At the eleventh hourIn my ivory towerI circled the wagonsGot my ducks in a row;I let sleeping dogs layWhere every dog has his dayAnd all the world was a stageWhen we were on the same pageI was flavour of the month‘Til I was yesterday’s newsMy talk was cheapBut I didn’t lose sleepThen it hit me like a ton of bricks!I’d been out of the loopLanded right in the soupAnd I was the last to knowI should have gone with the flow. At the end of the dayIt was a game of two halvesI was ahead by a noseBut got pipped at the postBy the Host with the MostAnd if turnabout is fair playYou could colour-me-amazedWhen the chickens I countedDidn’t come home to roost.For the grass it is greenerWhere the rolling stones gatherNo moss.(No loss.) Too many cooks spoiled my brothAnd a soft answer turn’d away WrathBut there were too many chiefsAnd not enough indians.Many hands made light workOf my best-laid plans(I’d had the whole world in my hands!)So I beat a retreatTo a threadbare roomWhere I quietly fumedTil the sun was under the yardarmAnd the daydodgilydamnablydone.-----Also available on the Inkslingers blog here. inkies.ie/record-of-a-day-rendered-entirely-in-cliches-by-stephen-brady/ ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 months ago

Wash Your Language
Here's a (true) story I wrote and told at an event in Belfast last year. It's the tale of the accordion that travelled many places with me and which I decided to pass on to someone who would need it more than me. The nice folk at BBC Radio Ulster recorded some of the stories from the event and you can hear it here (the first one). www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fr7t46 And if you have an instrument to donate in Ireland you can find the Gift of Music to Ukrainians page here. www.facebook.com/groups/5018344234885700with Tenx9washyourlanguage.com/the-accordions-tale/ ... See MoreSee Less

The Accordion's Tale - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

I wrote down this tale of an accordion looking for a new life, and I told it at a storytelling event in Belfast last November – the wonderful Tenx9 monthly event. The theme was Small World, and so t...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

4 months ago

Wash Your Language
Amazing! ... See MoreSee Less

South African firefighters sing and dance after arriving at Edmonton's airport

www.youtube.com

More than 200 South African firefighters deployed to help combat Canada's wildfires performed a dance at Edmonton's airport.Subscribe to CTV News to watch mo...

Video

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

6 months ago

Wash Your Language
I've had to clear every last thing out of my parents' house, the one they lived in (and we grew up in) from the mid-60s on. 2 weeks ago it passed along to a new family and it's starting a new life.The deepest reaches of the attic were cleared and I rediscovered some treasures from my life. Starting with this book.I bought it on my first ever trip to Oxford when I was about 19 - took a day trip with a friend while staying with my sister over the summer. I found this gorgeous 1931 edition in a stand at the old covered market, which I think is still there. We also picked up a sandwich which we brought to eat on a bench in Christchurch meadow. The book was inside a paper bag with some postcards I'd just written.An hour later, on the bus, I realised the bag was still on the bench and I'd never see it again. If the police found it they might blow it up, those being the days when every package or bag was a potential threat.Turns out the police did find it, but instead of destroying it they looked inside, saw one of the postcards addressed to Mum & Dad Prunty with our home address, and they posted the whole lot back in a padded envelope. With a compliments slip from Thames Valley Police.How could I have known that in the same city 4 years later I'd meet my husband? And that 30 years later I still wouldn't have read the book? ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash my language?

Språkvask is the Norwegian word for proofing text. Literally it means “language wash”; a more poetic way of saying it!

Blog comments

  • Donna on The Wall of Pink Covid Hearts
  • EmmaP on Tunes in an Empty Pub
  • Cathy Hogan on Tunes in an Empty Pub

© 2023 · Handcrafted with d by 2 Pups Design Co.