Auntie Sutton's Ginger Shortcake
Shortbread base:
8oz butter
4oz caster sugar
10oz self-raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
Melt butter in saucepan, add sugar, flour and ginger. Press into swiss-roll type tin and smooth top. Bake c. 30mins at Gas 3.
When shortbread is nearly ready, melt all the topping ingredients in the scraped clean saucepan you used for the base (original recipe does not specify this sluttish procedure - that's my addition):
6oz icing sugar
4oz butter
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbs golden syrup
Pour over the shortcake while both are still hot. Leave to cool.
This was one of the standard cakes from my childhood ('Auntie Sutton' being a very old lady from church, given the honorific 'Auntie' for old age, Sutton presumably being her surname) which my mother cooked quite often. I never liked it that much, but today I saw the recipe in my book of handwritten recipes and had a sudden yen to eat it. It's absolutely delicious. Extremely easy (I managed to do most of it it with my subordinate hand, my dominant hand being taken up with keeping a grizzly LB attached to my hip). And nom nom nom. It's very rich - all that butter. And probably not that nutritious, but who cares when it tastes this good? The shortbread bit has that amazing melt-in-your-mouth texture and mouth-feel. I might use the base recipe without the ginger next time I want to make plain shortbread. It's come out much better than my usual shortbread recipe. The whole thing is not hugely gingery, an artefact, perhaps, of an age when most British people didn't eat much spicy food, but I rather like the subtlety of it. If you wanted it more gingery you could, of course just increase that.
Must dash - need to eat another piece before bedtime.
8oz butter
4oz caster sugar
10oz self-raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
Melt butter in saucepan, add sugar, flour and ginger. Press into swiss-roll type tin and smooth top. Bake c. 30mins at Gas 3.
When shortbread is nearly ready, melt all the topping ingredients in the scraped clean saucepan you used for the base (original recipe does not specify this sluttish procedure - that's my addition):
6oz icing sugar
4oz butter
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbs golden syrup
Pour over the shortcake while both are still hot. Leave to cool.
This was one of the standard cakes from my childhood ('Auntie Sutton' being a very old lady from church, given the honorific 'Auntie' for old age, Sutton presumably being her surname) which my mother cooked quite often. I never liked it that much, but today I saw the recipe in my book of handwritten recipes and had a sudden yen to eat it. It's absolutely delicious. Extremely easy (I managed to do most of it it with my subordinate hand, my dominant hand being taken up with keeping a grizzly LB attached to my hip). And nom nom nom. It's very rich - all that butter. And probably not that nutritious, but who cares when it tastes this good? The shortbread bit has that amazing melt-in-your-mouth texture and mouth-feel. I might use the base recipe without the ginger next time I want to make plain shortbread. It's come out much better than my usual shortbread recipe. The whole thing is not hugely gingery, an artefact, perhaps, of an age when most British people didn't eat much spicy food, but I rather like the subtlety of it. If you wanted it more gingery you could, of course just increase that.
Must dash - need to eat another piece before bedtime.