Maria’s Marmalade Gingerbread

My friend Maria is a great cook and a fabulous host.  She has two lovely guinea pigs called Rufus and Ruby – Rufus came from the same rescue shelter that Borage did.  This is her recipe for Marmalade Gingerbread that even those (like myself) who refuse to put marmalade on their toast will enjoy.

Usually I’m not one for taking photos of the different stages of cooking.  This is for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, I don’t have a beautiful wooden worktop against which to frame my pictures – it’s some manky plastic fake-marble stuff that I really dislike and swore that I wouldn’t buy a house with it in…  Secondly I can’t be faffed with arranging stuff nicely in all the beautiful bowls and dishes that I have – I just want to get on with cooking.  And finally, I make quite a lot of mess when I’m cooking, so the effort involved to tidy it up for glamorous shots of beautiful ingredients is a bit beyond me, especially if it’s the end of a long day at work.

We made Maria’s Marmalade Gingerbread on the weekend, so there was a little bit more time, but the photos are still highly unglamorous and set off nicely by the fake-marble laminate worktop.  So…

The ingredients you need to make Maria’s Marmalade Gingerbread are: self-raising flour, butter, golden syrup, a jar of marmalade, an egg, ground ginger, ground cinnamon and a dash of milk.

the ingredients for maria's marmalade gingerbread

In a pan you melt the butter, golden syrup and the marmalade.  It looks like this…

butter, golden syrup and marmalade melting

In a separate bowl sieve together the flour, ground ginger and ground cinnamon.  Something like this…

sieve flour, ground ginger and cinnamon

When the syrupy-buttery-marmalade mixture has cooled slightly, add a beaten egg and a glug of milk and mix it well.  Then you pour this into the flour mixture…

pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients

…and fold it in…

fold it in

Finally you tip the mixture into a greased baking tin and bung it in the oven for half an hour or so.  It is transformed from this…

before baking

to this…

baked

Ideas we had on how to eat it included a dollop of creme fraiche or a simple drizzled icing.  Maria’s recipe recommends that it is best eaten after 3 days – N was very unhappy at this prospect so we made biscuits to get him through.  The first taste will be tomorrow!  Having tasted Maria’s a month ago we are eagerly anticipating it.  Below you can find the full recipe which hopefully you will try and enjoy making.

Maria’s Marmalade Gingerbread

Serves 8-10

75g butter
150g golden syrup
225g marmalade
225g self-raising flour
4 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp milk

Preheat your oven to 170°C.

Select your cake tin (Maria used a smaller tin than we did which produced a thicker gingerbread – we would do this next time). Grease it with a knob of butter and cut out a square of greaseproof paper to line the bottom.

In a saucepan, melt the butter, golden syrup and marmalade over a medium heat. Allow the mixture to cool a little.

In the meantime, sieve the flour, ginger and cinnamon into a bowl.

When the butter and syrup mixture has cooled a little, add the beaten egg and milk. Mix well and pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Use a spoon to fold it in.

Pour the mixture into your prepared cake tin and put in the oven for 30-50 minutes (this all depends on how thick the gingerbread will be). You can test the gingerbread to see if it’s ready by seeing if a skewer comes out clean.

Allow it to cool for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

This cake stores really well and is best eaten after three days – if you can wait that long!