Sticky Ginger Bread Cake

Before moving to London i used to work in private catering, roaming the Highlands, Islands & Lowlands of Scotland. Working mainly in hunting lodges & large houses i met some interesting, eccentric & on occasion down right odd people. From the ageing Lady M---- who regularly carried her Pekingese dog back to front due to constantly confusing its face & backside, to the lovely but completely batty lady from Surrey who constantly tried to get my fellow cook & i to go skinny dipping with her in a freezing Scottish loch, promising us it would be bracing. I never did-promise…

One particular job i worked on was three long weeks cooking on a Scottish Island for an extremely old school couple, who firmly believed that young girls (as i was then) should not only be seen & not heard, but shouldn’t be seen out of the kitchen unless working in the laundry. The lady of the house was a complete harridan & the sort that went to an all girls’ boarding school in the fifties, thriving on cold showers & plain porridge. One afternoon she asked me to bake a ginger cake from an ancient recipe book she brought from the library (second on the left just past the billiards room) It seemed such a delicious recipe that thought i would add it to my notebook for the future. As i was just about to start the battleaxe came into the kitchen & on seeing what i was doing, frankly went bonkers- screaming across the kitchen like a banshee, setting all the dogs barking & causing total panic. (i panic easily-just ask the houseboy) Apparently it was an age-old family recipe handed down through generations & ‘not any old person’ could just have it. I have the memory of a sieve & numbers over ten bring me out in cold sweat-there was no way i was going to remember it off the top of my head. So being mature & professional i crept downstairs in the middle of the night, totally petrified as the house was huge and filled with stuffed animals & creaky floors, but too stubborn not to have the bloody recipe in my clutches & copied it down. So people, please bake this as many times as you wish & spread some love, it makes me happy to think there may be lots of ‘any old people’ out there enjoying it.

Ingredients:
• 200g treacle
• 200g golden syrup
• 200g butter
• 300g caster sugar
• 300g plain flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp ground ginger
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 2 beaten eggs
• 150mls boiling water

Start by heating your oven to 190C, then place the treacle, syrup, butter & caster sugar into a pan & bring to the boil. Take the mixture off the heat & carefully sieve in all the dry ingredients, mix well & then beat in the eggs followed by the boiling water. Pop into the oven & turn to down to 180C. Bake for roughly 50mins & check the middle of the cake using a skewer.