Northumberland Spiced & Ginger Cookies
I have been asked, more than once, for “the ginger ones,” as if there were only the one sort of ginger thing in the world, and as if I kept a card for it in a box, which I do not. The card went to the jumble in 1998 with a lot of other good intentions, and I have made them from the head ever since, which is how Mother made them, and her mother, who came from up the North Tyne and would not have written an ounce down if you had paid her. So this is not a proper recipe. It is what I do, and what I remember, and what I tell people when they stand in the kitchen with a pencil and then lose the pencil.
They are a winter biscuit in our house, though I have made them in August when the hall wanted a tin and I was not about to invent a summer cake. The smell of them is the smell of the first frost on the grass by the gate: ginger, and the dark of treacle, and a little spice that is not quite Christmas. If you open the pantry and the ginger is there, that is the day. If the ginger is not there you will have to go to Hexham, and the grocer in Hexham sells a ground ginger that will do, though it is not as fierce as the tin I used to get from the chemist, which was meant for the stomach and did very well in a biscuit. I still keep a second tin for the drains. Do not mix them up. I did, in 2001, and we did not speak of the batch.
I start with the yellow bowl, the one with the chip, not the wedding set. Into it goes half a pound of plain flour — that is eight ounces if your scales still speak in ounces, which mine do, the digital ones having gone to the jumble after they asked for a battery I did not have. A teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, the same sort you use when the sink is slow, though I keep a spoon for the baking and I should like it left there. Two teaspoons of ground ginger if you want them to catch the throat a little; Mother used two and we were not allowed to complain. A teaspoon of mixed spice. A pinch of cinnamon if the jar is not empty, and it is often empty because I put it on the porridge and then forget. Some of the women put a handful of oatmeal in, for the Northumberland of it. I do, if the porridge is already on the table and I cannot be bothered to put the bag away. I do not, if I have swept. You will not notice either way unless you are looking for a reason to.
The butter is four ounces, the paper sort, not the tub. I still unwrap it and I still scrape the paper with a knife, which is a habit from when butter was a thing you did not waste. Soft brown sugar, the same four ounces. I have used dark muscovado when that was what came back from market, and the cookies were a little more treacly and nobody complained except the one who complains anyway. In a small pan — the one with the loose handle, you will know it if you have been here — I melt the butter slowly with the sugar and two good tablespoons of golden syrup and one tablespoon of black treacle. The treacle is the Northumberland. Without it they are only ginger biscuits, and you may as well get a packet on the Hexham road and save your gas. Stir until it looks like a dark sauce and smells like November. Take it off before it bubbles. If it bubbles you have made toffee and that is another afternoon.
I should say something about quantities, because people write and ask, as if I had not already put them in. I will put them again, in a list, which is not how I think, but I have been told a list is a kindness. You will still have to read the rest, I am afraid. The oven does not care for lists.
What I get out, more or less
Pour the warm pan into the bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. It will look as if it will never come together, and then it will, quite suddenly, as dough does when it has had enough of you. Beat in the egg. If you have no egg, the milk, just enough to make it clump. I have made them with no egg and no milk in a hard January, and they were shorter, and we ate them anyway with a slice of cheese, which is not traditional and is very good.
You must let it sit. Not all afternoon — I have never had all afternoon — but while you wash the pan and find the trays and remember where you put the greaseproof. Ten minutes. If you rush it in a warm kitchen the butter will have its own ideas and they will spread into one another on the tray and you will have a sort of ginger pavement, which the children liked in 1996 and I have not repeated on purpose. Flour your hands. Pull off pieces the size of a walnut. I do not weigh them. There are twenty or so, unless I have eaten one raw, which I do, and which you must not mention to the doctor. Set them a little apart. Flatten each with a fork, the way one does a peanut biscuit, though there are no peanuts here and I will not have them, not after the hall supper of ’99.
The oven is 180 °C, which is gas mark 4, which is the same as the scones, which is useful because I do not have a spare head for numbers. Twelve minutes, perhaps ten if your oven runs hot, as mine has done since the man from Bellingham came and went and left the door with an opinion. They should be a little soft in the middle when you take them. They will firm on the tray. If you leave them in until they look done they will cool to a snap and someone will say they are gingernuts after all, and I shall be in the other room.
Let them sit on the tray a minute, then to a rack. I put the rack by the window, not because it cools them faster, though it does, but because that is where Mother put them, and the steam used to mark the glass, and in a certain light you can still see it. They keep in a tin. They do not keep if you leave the tin in the hall. I send a tin to Sunday tea when there is Sunday tea, and I put a bit of greaseproof between the layers, and I still find crumbs in the tin in March, which is a sort of calendar.
If you are making them for a frost, make them the day before. If you are making them because someone is coming, make them in the morning and do not open the tin until they have sat down. If you are making them because the house is quiet, you may eat two from the tray, standing up, which is not how we were taught and is the only way I like them when they are still a little warm and the ginger has not yet decided to be polite.
I was going to say something about the mixed spice. It is not a mystery. It is the jar that says mixed spice. If you have no mixed spice you may put a little nutmeg and a little allspice and stop there. Do not invent a blend. This is not that sort of kitchen. The cookies will forgive you a pinch either way. They will not forgive you leaving out the treacle, and neither shall I, though I shall be very nice about it in a letter.
Do write and tell me how yours turned out, if you like, though this page does not take letters and I collect mine twice a week from a box that is not on the internet. I am always glad of a tin in return, if you are coming this way and if the road is open. I am not particular as to the tin. I am particular as to the treacle.