British Rail Gingerbread

British Rail Gingerbread

So, we were in Newcastle for the Chinese New Year Celebrations, and afterwards, walking back to the car we gazed in the window of the Pink Lane Bakery where they had on sale "British Rail Gingerbread".  I was intrigued and so "googled" it and came across this recipe on a blog called Bakestone, which is a hybrid of recipes by Linda Collister in the Baking Book, Food From the Place Below and Nigella Lawson in How to Eat.

I'm still not entirely sure why it's called British Rail Gingerbread, but I'll go along with it.

So:

Ingredients

225g self raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

grating of fresh nutmeg

100g butter

3 pieces of stem ginger

100g muscovado sugar/dark brown sugar

300ml milk

100g black treacle

100g golden syrup

3 balls of stem ginger (approx 45g)

1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180ºC

Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.

In a pan, dissolve the sugar in the milk and leave to cool.  Melt together the syrup and treacle. Let them cool.

Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices and rub in the butter.  Grate in the stem ginger.  Now add the milk mixture, the treacle mixture and the beaten egg and mix well.  

Pour into the tin and bake for 45 mins to 1 hour.

Wrap in greaseproof paper and it will keep for several days in a cake tin. (Based on what evidence I wonder?)

Here's mine.....it's lovely.....reminds me of my Gran's gingerbread