Gingerbread etc
I have Peter’s head cold. I feel like boiled death: grey and mushy. Unnnnngh. I’ve known for about twenty four hours that it was coming but I was managing to ignore it, through a powerful combination of self-delusion and headmistressyness (‘McKinley! Pull yourself together and do something!’*). This afternoon it knocked me down and sat on my chest, cackling maniacally. I did make it to bell practise tonight, but I expended the last of my brain power surviving a touch of Grandsire doubles inside.** It seems to have got late without my noticing, but I’m now going to post GINGERBREAD AS PROMISED and go to bed.
So. Finally. I know I did promise you a gingerbread recipe. (I think I promised you a gingerbread recipe about three days ago. Given my standard performance about deadlines, however, this is great. Where’s my medal?)
Where to begin? I have kind of a lot of them. Well, here’s the one I started with, and my handwriting on this one is so old it doesn’t even look like mine. I was still making most of my letters the way they taught you joined-up writing in school. I must have been eleven or so, when I was only just beginning to make tentative stabs at baking. (Let me see . . . this must be a tablespoon . . . but what’s that? And how do I know when I’ve mixed something well? And what happens when you spill about half your bottle of vanilla in the batter? ***)
Hot Water Gingerbread
1 egg
½ c sugar
½ c (darkest) molasses
5 T butter †
½ c hot water
2 c (ordinary white) flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
Beat egg till light, beat in sugar and add molasses. Melt butter in hot water and add alternately with egg-sugar mixture to the sifted dry ingredients. The batter will be a little thin, but that is all right. Turn into buttered 8” square dish, bake 325-350 F 35-45 minutes, test with toothpick. If in doubt go for lower temp, better baked slowly.
Here follows what was my reason for living (bar chocolate) for years and is one of the things I still dream about. SIGH. Maybe I should sacrifice one of my approximately-twice-yearly ice-cream blow outs and make a half go of this.
Topping for Gingerbread
2, 3-oz packages of Philadelphia cream cheese ††
3 c powdered/icing/confectioner’s sugar
1 egg white
You’re probably not allowed to use egg whites raw any more. Well, buy organic and check the date, or raise chickens. Mash the cream cheese and add the sugar, creaming it till smooth. Fold into it the stiffly beaten white of egg. I don’t have to tell you to put it on the gingerbread only as it is served, do I? If you smear it all on any that remains uneaten ††† will be nasty by the next day: the topping will discolour and go runny and the gingerbread will get soggy. ‡
Hideous admission: one egg white will stretch to half again this much sugar and cream cheese. I used to really like this topping. But then I’m a ‘a little bread with my butter’ person too. ‡‡ You should see me hitting the brandy butter for the Christmas pudding. ‡‡‡
Happy gorging. . . .
* So I did. I’ve been having a weird little spasm of wanting to have a, you know, life, like most people do, or at least do the sorts of things other people do-you blog people are not blameless in this regard-so tonight, honking rather^, I rang up and booked tickets to THE GOLDEN COMPASS next week, Fairport Convention^^ about a month from now, and Steeleye Span-yessssss! For those of you following the comments-the end of April.
This activity was made more interesting by the fact that my phone has gone dead. Broadband still works, but I have no telephone. Go figure. I spent several hours untangling wiring, unplugging and replugging, weeping and railing, and stomping down to the mews to borrow a telephone I knew worked just in case both of mine had melted in the same blast of invisible radiation from the orbiting Gflytch ship^^^. I did phone the Phone People-from the mews-who appear all to be on holiday. Or possibly have been abducted by the Gflytch.
If I had to choose between the phone and broadband, by the way . . . I’d take broadband. Phones were invented to ring while you’re in the bath. And what would I do about the blog?
^ Between the two of us Peter and I are putting up the Kleenex stock remarkably. I recommend you sell now, before we recover.
^^ One of the foundation folk rock groups. Their concerts are a hoot because they’re full of ageing hippies wearing socks with their sandals. Including the ones on stage. Last time I went to a Fairport concert I wore green velvet+ and heels just to throw some weight in another direction.
+ Well, in fact I do have a velvet thing, but I only have two velvet dresses, the green and the black I wore to Peter’s birthday party.
^^^ Gee, I wonder what incredible breakthrough I was about to make that they needed to prevent?
** You don’t really want to know, do you? One of these days I’m also going to start putting a FAQ together for this blog. And then I can stop re-explaining bell stuff . . . and you can just skip over it.
*** It’s a little intense, but if it’s chocolate chip cookies, you hastily melt an extra pack of chocolate, which fortunately you happen to have because you’re paranoid about running out of things, to beat into the batter, you call them Intense Chocolate Cookies, and everyone eats them. I think this was pretty good on-your-feet thinking for fifteen years old.
† In the original it’s ‘shortening’. I grew up eating Crisco. It’s a wonder I survived. Well . . . possibly this explains a lot. . . . ^
^ You do? My gods. Well, stop it at once. And don’t let me hear you say anything about Pam and its stickless ilk.
†† Note that I have no idea if American shops still carry 3-oz packages of cream cheese, let alone Philadelphia cream cheese, but I’m sure you can adapt.^ In my cream cheese days Philly was still considered the best.
^ The rest of you are on your own.
††† Oh dear! I seem absent-mindedly to have put all the topping on all the gingerbread! I guess I’ll just have to finish it!
‡ Actually no, this isn’t personal experience. I was warned. At age eleven I needed the warning.
‡‡ I was, before menopause. D’you suppose things will calm down again, after it’s over? No . . . I didn’t think so.
‡‡‡ Fortunately it’s a very small Christmas pudding and we’ll probably get through it before I burst out of my jeans. Probably.