Scottish Gingerbread Recipes

Steps:

• Grease and line a deep 7-inch square cake tin.
• Sift the flour, ginger, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together.
• Place sugar, butter, syrup and milk in a pan and warm gently until melted and blended.
• Do not boil.
• Add to the flour with the eggs and mix thoroughly.
• Stir in orange zest and apricots.
• Turn into the baking tin and bake at 325ºF for 60-65 minutes or until firm to the touch.
• Turn out and cool.
• The flavour of this cake improves with age.
• Store in an airtight container for 2-3 days before serving.

Steps:

• 1. Original version: Beat 8 oz. butter to a cream. Mix with 12 oz. flour, 4 oz. oatmeal, 1/2 gill cream. Stir in 12 oz. treacle, 1 oz. green ginger, 4 oz. lemon peel cut into fine shreds. Work the whole into a light dough. Bake in a greased tin for 45 minutes.
• 2. Modern version: Cream the butter. Beat in flour, oats, and cream. Add in sorghum, ginger, and lemon peel. (This looks like a lot of peel. I wouldn't pack it down in the cup.) Combine well.
• 3. Preheat oven to 350-375 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 inch cake pan. Spread batter into prepared pan.
• 4. Bake at 350 to 375 degrees about 40-45 minutes. Watch carefully so it doesn't burn. Since no temperature was given in the recipe, and temperatures varied greatly back then, it's hard to judge how long to cook it.
• 5. Cool 10 minutes in pan. May cut and serve from pan, or turn out onto serving plate and slice to serve.

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9-inch square pan.
• In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the egg, and mix in the molasses.
• In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Blend into the creamed mixture. Stir in the hot water. Pour into the prepared pan.
• Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan before serving.

Steps:

• Heat the butter, syrup and sugar together in a small pan until melted, stirring occasionally. Set aside to cool slightly.
• Mix together the bicarb, ginger, cinnamon and flour in a large bowl. Pour in the buttery syrup mixture and stir to combine, then use your hands to bring together to form a dough. The dough will be soft at this point, but it'll firm up in the fridge.
• Put the dough on a sheet of baking parchment, shape into a rectangle, and lay another sheet of parchment on top of it. Roll the dough out to a thickness of ½cm. Transfer to a baking sheet to keep it flat, leaving the parchment in place, then chill in the fridge for 1 hr.
• Heat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5 and line a large baking sheet with more baking parchment. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut out shapes using a cookie cutter. We used 9cm stars, but you can choose any shape. We also made some with smaller stars cut out of the centre to thread ribbon through and hang from a Christmas tree.
• Place the shapes, spread apart, on the lined baking sheet, and bake for 10-12 mins. (Depending on the size of the cutters you use, they might need a few minutes more or less cooking in the oven). Leave to cool completely on the baking sheet.
• Meanwhile, mix the icing sugar with 1-2 tbsp water - you want to create a consistency that's thick and pipeable, and not too thin or it will run. Decorate the cooled biscuits with the icing using a piping bag with a thin nozzle. Find out how to make a piping bag.

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Line a seven inch square baking pan with greaseproof paper which has been well buttered.
• Melt the 2 ounces butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan over a low heat.
• Sift the flour and baking soda into a bowl.
• Add the oatmeal and spices.
• Add the melted butter and treacle mixture, beaten egg and the milk to the bowl, stirring well until completely blended.
• Pour into the baking pan and bake about 45 minutes.
• Allow the cake to cool for ten minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
• Serve with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Steps:

• Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won't quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.
• Cut out the template (download from the tips below). Put a sheet of baking paper on a work surface and roll about one quarter of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Cut out one of the sections, then slide the gingerbread, still on its baking paper, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels. Any leftover dough can be cut into Christmas trees, if you like.
• Pick out the most intact flaked almonds and gently poke them into the roof sections, pointy-end first, to look like roof tiles. Bake all the sections for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few minutes to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
• Put the egg whites in a large bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium nozzle. Pipe generous snakes of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours.
• Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. The angle is steep so you may need to hold these on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight. To decorate, pipe a little icing along the length of 20 mini chocolate fingers and stick these lengthways onto the side walls of the house. Use three, upright, for the door.
• Using the icing, stick sweets around the door and on the front of the house. To make the icicles, start with the nozzle at a 90-degree angle to the roof and squeeze out a pea-sized blob of icing. Keeping the pressure on, pull the nozzle down and then off - the icing will pull away, leaving a pointy trail. Repeat all around the front of the house. Cut the chocolate mini roll or dipped Flake on an angle, then fix with icing to make a chimney. Pipe a little icing around the top. If you've made gingerbread trees, decorate these now, too, topping each with a silver ball, if using. Dust the roof with icing sugar for a snowy effect. Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread trees around and about using blobs of icing. Your gingerbread house will be edible for about a week.