Happy New Year to anyone who might be reading this. I’m determined to get back into my neglected blog this year.  It’s been so long but you know what it’s like leading up to Christmas, things just go crazy. Here’s another recipe I had a go at a few weeks ago.  I just love anything with ginger in it and was keen to have a go at baking the Sticky Ginger Traybake from the latest Great British Bake Off cookbook. The recipe introduction made it sound even more mouthwatering: “..this dark, almost black, sticky toffee gingerbread with a crunchy topping.  Dark muscovado sugar and black treacle give it a rich bitter sweetness while stem ginger adds fire and heat,”

The traybake is a sticky gingerbread base with a crunchy topping and just speaks of Autumn and Bonfire Night to me. The base is baked separately from the topping.

First of all I put butter, treacle and dark muscovado sugar into a pan and heated it gently.  Then I chopped some stem ginger into large chunks and added it to the pan with some reserved syrup from the stem ginger jar.

As this was melting, I sifted plain flour, ground ginger, mixed spice and some bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl.  Once this was done I then mixed in two medium eggs. The melted ginger mixture was also added to the bowl to make the gingerbread. This was then poured into my prepared traybake tin and baked in the oven for about 15 minutes.

While the gingerbread base was in the oven I made the topping which was made up of plain flour, ground ginger, light brown muscovado sugar, unsalted butter and stem ginger.  It was a rubbed in mixture.  When the gingerbread base came out of the oven I sprinkled the topping onto it and then put it back into the oven for another 25 minutes.  The aroma of spicy gingerbread was just gorgeous and I couldn’t wait to try a piece.

I was really pleased with how the gingerbread traybake turned out and it will be something I’d love to bake more of in the future.  The flavour of the gingerbread was very spicy and intense so it might not appeal to those who love strong flavours.  It did to me though, in fact if I’d not stopped myself I would have eaten more slices.  I put them in a box and took them to the school I was teaching in the following day to share out in the staff room.  I’m not sure whether they went down well or not, I forgot to ask!

Happy Baking.

Love Sam xx