This is not really a blog post, just a fully blown boast-fest. May the gods of baking forever burn my pans for such pridefullness. Against the odds I have managed to bake the perfect gingerbread cake.
We don't really have a kitchen, just a tiny square matchbox about the size of a small entrance hall (we don't have one of those either). The original cottage was a one up one downer for farm labourers, and all the cooking would have been done on a range in the main fireplace. Naturally the last thing on our landlord's mind when he inherited the cottage was to provide adequate cooking facilities. (Or adequate anything really). So for the last seven years, I have baked, roasted, fried and grilled on this. If the kitchen door (just seen right) is open, you wouldn't even know we had a cooker.
We don't really have a kitchen, just a tiny square matchbox about the size of a small entrance hall (we don't have one of those either). The original cottage was a one up one downer for farm labourers, and all the cooking would have been done on a range in the main fireplace. Naturally the last thing on our landlord's mind when he inherited the cottage was to provide adequate cooking facilities. (Or adequate anything really). So for the last seven years, I have baked, roasted, fried and grilled on this. If the kitchen door (just seen right) is open, you wouldn't even know we had a cooker.
In fact, this is the second cooker we have had here; I killed the first by using it. I think I'm going to kill this one too, as it is a rickety tin-box with heating elements. The knobs claim that the two hotplates go from 1 to 5, but they lie. There is only one temperature and that is hot; unless it times out and you have to wait another five minutes for whateveritis to start cooking. Now the fan oven seems to be going the same way and to my eternal shame I burnt a fruit cake the other month. So it is a minor miracle that last night I produced a perfect pillow of gingerbread.
Even though I dickered about with the recipe, from my old trusty 1950's Good Housekeeping book. (First port of call for everything).
I made a half and half mix of black treacle and golden syrup, put in less milk and baked it using only the bottom of the oven heat. It rose slowly and majestically, a big bronzed belly of a cake with barely a crack in the top. Overnight it has gone slightly sticky and a big slab has mysteriously been cut from it. Not me. I don't even eat the stuff.
