Sunday's gingerbread

Recently, I have had a bit of a problem:

• Matt remains adamant that he wants to lose some weight
• I am keen to support Matt's health kick
• I love making cake
• Matt can't resist eating it if there is cake in the house

* Therefore by making cake and leaving it in the house I am implicit in impeding Matt's slenderising efforts.

So whenever there's an opportunity to bake a cake to share with others I'm only too happy to do this. The current occasion was a visit from Matt's sister and brother-in-law and a visit for all of us down to some friends in Cornwall.

I decided that I wanted to make something gingery. I had loads of recipes for gingery things but, overwhelmed by the choice, I chose to make something that I didn't have the recipe for: my granny's gingerbread. My granny was a great baker (I have particularly fond memories of her chocolate melting moments) and I remember her gingerbread being rich and moist and delicious.

A telephone call to, and an email from my mum (complete with attachment) later I was ready to go. Mum had even converted the recipe to metric for me which, given that the scales can do imperial, was unnecessary but very kind (imperial makes my brain go a little bit funny).

Like all the best recipes this one is very simple and requires no complex techniques.

1. Melt together 100g of butter (the instructions from mum actually said margarine but butter usually tastes better although I suppose that margarine might be more authentic if it's a WW2 era recipe), 100g of sugar (I used soft brown sugar) and 250g of black treacle (mmm, I love black treacle). I intended to do this in the microwave (again, very non-authentic but granny did embrace mod-cons) but first had to eliminate the smell of garlic from said appliance. In the early hours of the morning Matt had decided that he would cook a garlic bread in the microwave (that's a whole other story) and it now wreaked. So I found an old lemon and squeezed it into a wide bowl and put it in the microwave on high for a few minutes – this is a very effective microwave de-odourising method. The melting of the ingredients took just a few 20 second blasts on high with a stir in between each one.

2. Sift / stir together 275g plain flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon (I was pretty generous with the spices).

3. Whisk up an egg with 200ml of milk (whisking with a fork is adequate).

4. Stir the egg / milk into the dry ingredients – it looked a bit like raw bread dough when I'd done this bit.

5. Stir the butter / sugar / treacle mixture into the rest of it. I used a wooden spoon and just kept mixing until it all looked even.

6. Add some lumpy bits if you fancy – I used a large tablespoon of chopped stem ginger and a handful of sultanas. Some chopped nuts might also be nice. I had to resist the temptation of adding loads because I figured this would absorb a lot of the moisture and dry out the gingerbread.

7. Pour into a lined 20cm square tin (that's what the instructions said but I used a long loaf tin instead) and bake at 150-160ºC (fan) for one and a half hours. At least that was the instructions, I think it might have got away with a little less time.

Matt just about managed to squeeze the loaf into our largest plastic food box for the trip westwards. It was extracted again after we had let our delicious barbecue dinner go down. All seven of us had a slice, some of us two. I was informed that it went very nicely with crème fraiche and there was one voice who lamented the lack of clotted cream but I enjoyed mine very much just as it was. There was a unanimously positive verdict including (what I rate as a key indicator of success) a request for the recipe. And Matt was saved from himself as our hosts were only too happy to finish off the leftovers over the next few days.

(I'm waiting for my sister-in-law to send me the pic that she took of the finished product! In the meantime I'm sure you can use your imagination.)

It wasn't as sticky as I remember Granny's gingerbread being but tasted just right. On a follow-up phone call to my mum to report of the outcome, she told me that it gets stickier (and thus probably better) with age – up to a point. Apparently it will keep well for up to a week. So I'm going to do another one midweek for next weekend.