Nigella’s Sticky Gingerbread

This sticky gingerbread by food guru Nigella Lawson won me a ‘Bake Off’ competition whilst working at Livingetc. John Torode was one of the judges so to say I was chuffed is an understatement. The smells just shout Christmas to me, and this makes a great gift as it keeps for up to 2 weeks. Bailey and I made these for his teachers at Christmas. You can get some amazing cake presentation boxes from Lakeland or Amazon where you bake the ingredients in the box in the oven, then wrap it in the food bag with twine and a tag and you have a perfect home-made gift. These are the ones we did this year.

INGREDIENTS
Makes about 20 squares or 3 small cake gift boxes (as seen above)

150g butter
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
125g dark muscovado sugar
2 tsps finely grated ginger
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 30ml (2 tbsps) of warm water
250 ml full fat milk
2 eggs, beaten
300g plain flour

Preheat the oven to fan 160 and line a baking tray with baking parchment. You can either use one tray measuring approx 30 x 20 x 5cm like a brownie tin, or divide the mixture into smaller trays for instance if you are making them as gifts in the presentation boxes as above.
In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, syrup, treacle, fresh and ground ginger, cinnamon and cloves, over a low heat until all melted together.
Take off the heat, add the milk, eggs and dissolved bicarb of soda in the water.
Put your flour into a separate bowl and pour in the liquid ingredients, beating until well mixed. It will be quite a liquid batter so don’t worry if it looks very runny compare to other cake mixes.
Pour your mix into your prepared roasting trays and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes (if you have used the smaller presentation boxes have a check at 35 minutes). Don’t overcook, the mix should be risen and firm on top but still a little spongy and a skewer shouldn’t be dry if pushed into the bake.
Leave in the tin to cool on a wire rack. If you are using the presentation gift boxes, once cooled you are set to place in the clear gift bags and fasten with your gift ribbon and tag.
Otherwise, once cool, cut into small squares. I really like to dust with icing sugar, I think it gives a better finish, especially round Christmas it reminds me of snow, and can hide a huge amount of sins.
Wrap loosely in baking parchment and store in an airtight cake tin to keep it fresh for up to 2 weeks.