GINGERBREAD (the CAKE, not the MAN!)

I just love gingerbread and having a cold, but sunny day seemed the perfect excuse to play around with a homey cake that brought back the warm fuzzies from my childhood…you know the score. Walk home from school, open the door to a welcoming warm smell of something delicious. My mum used to make ‘Parkin’ which is basically gingerbread in a huge slab cake. So partly as a salute to my Yorkshire origins and because I’ve been reading Cyndi O’Meara’s website (and she firmly believes that a piece of cake made with real eggs, butter and raw sugar, is a great treat and not at all bad for you), and partly because I agree with her and knowing the love that ‘homemade’ adds to anything, (it just puts the icing on the cake…that and the lemon glaze…yes I am still using those lemons;) Here is my Old Fashioned Gingerbread…or Parkin! Enjoy.

NEED:
225 grams unsalted butter
200 grams caster sugar
3 eggs
1 cup treacle (or honey, though this does add different taste)
1 cup milk
480 grams unbleached SR flour
1 teaspoon each;
cinnamon, cardomom, nutmeg, cloves
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon orange essence
1/2 teaspoon almond essence

DO:
Spray 23 cm pan with cooking spray.
Place milk and treacle in Thermomix bowl and heat on 70 degrees and stir for 3 minutes.
Beat on Speed 8 for 10 seconds, pour out and set aside to cool slightly.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy on speed 7 for 2 minutes.
Scrape down side of bowl from time to time as needed.
Slowly add eggs beating between additions.
Add treacle/milk mix and beat till well intergrated.
Add spices and flour and mix until just combined (on speed 4, around 30 seconds)
Pour batter into prepared tin.
Process in steam oven for one hour.
Move to pre-heated oven (160 degrees) for a further 30 minutes.

SERVE:
With a lemon glaze made from 1/2 cup icing sugar (make your own in the TM) and the juice of 1/2 lemon.
And FYI; This is better by far the next day and the day after that…should it last that long!