You are here: Home/Recipes/ Welsh Gingerbread Recipe
Jump to Recipe
This recipe for Welsh Gingerbread is an old one. I picked it up duringmy culinary tour of Wales, and as you can see from the picture, it comes from an old book. You know, the kind your grandmother has stashed on the shelf.There’s no reference to what year this book was made, but there is a little note at the top of the recipe that says it was the original gingerbread sold at old Welsh Fairs. In the spirit of the holiday season, I couldn’t wait to try it out!
Translating Measurements
Now, I confess, it took me a couple of tries. Here in the United States, we don’t measure things by the “gill,” and I had to do a bit of googling to discover ourequivalent of demerara sugar (it’s brown sugar) and black treacle (it’s molasses). We also don’t have an Oven Control, Mark 3. So this was a fun experiment. But the results were worth it.
Testing An Old Gingerbread Recipe
Thankfully, most of the measurements were by weight/ounces, so I only had one that was a bit tricky — a gill. According to Wikipedia, “Agill or teacup is a unit of measurement for volume equal to a quarter of a pint. It is no longer in common use, except in regard to the volume of alcoholic spirits measures.” I also found a few references that said it was equivalent to a half cup, or five fluid ounces. So, I started with that measurement, but it ended up being a bit too moist. Then I cut it down to a third, and it was still a bit moist. Finally, I cut both the milk ANDthe molasses down to 1/3 cup and that ended up being about right.
Now, something you’ll notice about the original Welsh gingerbread recipe pictured — there are no eggs. And no ginger, either! The recipe did mention candied peel, and I assumed that was ginger. I added a bit of ground ginger to the recipe to give it more a ginger flavor andmadea glaze sprinkled some candied ginger on top to make it more like a festive dessert. Enjoy!
Welsh Gingerbread With Orange Glaze & Candied Ginger
Add the flour, baking soda, cream of tarter, and ground ginger to a large bowl and whisk together.
Next, add the butter and press into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or fork until the butter is blended into the flour and it looks a little lumpy.
Add the brown sugar and to the flour mixture and stir together. Once it is well blended, add 1/4 cup of candied ginger and mix.
Heat the milk on the stove or in the microwave until it's warm, but not boiling. Pour the molasses into the milk and stir until the molasses is dissolved. Then pour the molasses milk into the flour and gently stir together until it's the consistency of a soft cookie dough.
Transfer dough into greased bread pan and bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (You may need a little longer depending on your oven)
While the gingerbread is baking, you can prepare the glaze.
Whisk the confectioners sugar with the orange juice until the sugar is completely dissolved and it is the consistency of a syrup.
Once the bread is done baking, let it cool for 1 hour. Drizzle with glaze and the rest of the candied ginger.
Did you make this recipe?
Follow us on Pinterest for more recipes!
More Recipes We Think You’ll Love
Gingerbread Pancakes
Holiday Sangria
French Canadian Meat Pie
Chocolate Peppermint Marshmallows
Want to save this recipe? Pin it! 🙂
About Rachelle Lucas
Rachelle is the founder of TheTravelBite.com and was named one of USA Today's 10Best Food and Travel Bloggers. She believes the best way to learn about a destination is through its flavors and collects recipes from her trips to recreate them here on The Travel Bite. In her spare time she enjoys running and yoga to balance out her food obsession.
Reader Interactions
Comments
Gaylesays
Candied peel is orange peel that has been cooked with sugar in a saucepan, sort of like peanut brittle. You also buy it ready made in grocery stores. It’s really good in breads and muffins
Reply
Annsays
In our neck of the woods, mixed peel is a mixture of orange, lemon and sometimes grapefruit peel, candied and chopped finely. It remains moist, not brittle. Added to Christmas cakes is usual here amongst other baked good where dried fruit may be used. Hot cross buns aren’t the same without it!
Chill the dough: The dough is sticky once it's all beaten together in your mixing bowl and therefore, it absolutely MUST be chilled for at least 3 hours. Give yourself enough time in the kitchen or make the cookie dough and chill it overnight.
First, the texture of the cookie needs to be fairly crispy along the outside with a semi-soft, cake-like inside, and like all "perfect" cut-out cookies, they definitely need to keep their shape when baked. Secondly, they must taste sweet but notably spicy, and have a rich molasses flavour.
Factor in two days when making the gingerbread dough as it needs to chill overnight. To get ahead though, the dough can be made up to two weeks in advance and kept in the fridge, just remember to take it out of the fridge half an hour or so before rolling out!
It will stay fresh at room temperature for up to five days and you can freeze it too, so you can make it ahead of time. Preheat oven to 180°C / 160°C fan-forced. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Once cooled, decorate your gingerbread with icing, lollies and Christmas decorations.
An overproofed dough won't expand much during baking, and neither will an underproofed one. Overproofed doughs collapse due to a weakened gluten structure and excessive gas production, while underproofed doughs do not yet have quite enough carbon dioxide production to expand the dough significantly.
If your dough is too sticky and it's impossible to work with you can add some extra flour, just a little at a time. Make sure you weigh the extra flour you add and then you'll be able to adjust the recipe correctly the next time you bake.
Chilling the dough makes the butter, and the dough firm up. Also, a very cold, even frozen crust will shrink less during baking. If you think about a stick of butter it makes sense: the cold butter keeps it's shape, When it softens, it spreads and no longer keeps it's shape.
“It adds enough bold flavor and sweet notes with a hint of bitterness to any recipe, which is exactly what you want for making gingerbread cookies.” Bourdon added that it's also versatile and can be used for marinades, baked beans, sauces, breads and recipes for other foods.
Divide the dough into two thick disks and wrap each disk in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, about 3 hours. (The dough can be prepared up to 2 days ahead.) To roll out the cookies, work with one disk at a time, keeping the other disk refrigerated.
Timing is the key to achieving the crispy edges and chewy centers of a perfect gingerbread cookie. Due to gingerbread's dark color, it can be tricky to tell when they're done baking—look for puffed up, just-set centers. Gingerbread cookies will collapse as they cool, delivering that chewy cookie texture.
Depending on the size of the house, you may want to make a sturdier style of gingerbread, which isn't as tasty. But as long as the house is fresh, it can be eaten within a few days of being assembled. If it sits around for a week or more, it will be stale.
As was expected because of the extra brown sugar, this cookie looked dark in color and took on the texture of molasses. I thought I was going to chip my tooth when I bit into this finished, extra-sugary cookie. It was hard and dense throughout.
The general rule of thumb is a couple of weeks. It depends how its prepared and if you used a lot of icing. Also, gingerbread like any other bread turns stale quite fast.
“Edible” is a loose term, apparently. A gingerbread house is about as edible as play-dough—you can eat it, but should you? These houses are usually left out for days (more on that later), drying out and crusting over.
Food that has passed its best before date is safe to eat. Best before should be considered a rough guide rather than a strict rule. There is no reason to throw away food that goes past its best before date, it is perfectly safe to eat and will often taste just as good.
When cookie dough is too sticky, you may have an imbalance of wet and dry ingredients. You can fix this by adding a teaspoon of flour or cornstarch at a time until your dough is just how you want. The added flour or cornstarch will absorb the excess liquid and reduce the dough's overall stickiness.
If your dough is too crumbly: mix in 1 tbsp of milk until the dough is soft and pliable again. Be sure to chill your dough for at least 3 hours. This will help the flavor of the dough and consistency so it doesn't spread when baking.
If you have a high hydration dough, it's going to be sticky. That's all there is too it. If you add more flour, you'll end up with a really tough, dry loaf, so don't add more flour! First thing you can do is set the dough aside after you've added your water and mixed it together.
Introduction: My name is Msgr. Refugio Daniel, I am a fine, precious, encouraging, calm, glamorous, vivacious, friendly person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.