Doing Good Whilst Eating Well
A brilliant charity cookbook, a family recipe and some baking book reviews
Happy Friday!
This week, I want to tell you a story. A story about connection through food, a connection to family and to the past. It is also a story about eating well whilst doing good. That part of the story is simple so let's begin there.
A few years ago, a friend reached out and asked if I would contribute, a recipe and a story, to a charity cookbook he was helping to put together. After a three year delay thanks to Covid that book, These Delicious Things, is now out in the world. The premise of the book is simple, recipes that connect us to our past, a dive into nostalgia, a reminder of childhood memories. The recipes and accompanying stories are from some of the UK’s very best chefs and food writers, and I was honoured to be asked to contribute. The book has been published in aide of a brilliant charity, Magic Breakfast, who supply 200,000 meals every morning to disadvantaged children up and down the country. Evidence shows that children who don’t have access to regular meals fall behind in their academic development and and by the time they leave school are far behind their peers (studies have shown this can be the equivalent of a 9 months deficiency in learning, after leaving primary school). Magic Breakfast’s mission is to make sure every child starts the day with a filling nutritious breakfast and they have been on this mission for over 20 years. This book is both an excellent read, with over 100 wonderful recipes and stories; it is also an excellent way to support such an amazing charity. The publisher of the book, Pavillion, have pledged to donate all profits from the book to Magic Breakfast and for every book sold that equates to feeding one whole class of children.
For those of you that have followed me from the start, you may well recognise this recipe, it was included in my first book, the sadly out of print The Boy Who Bakes. It was included in that book because it is the recipe I am most connected to, it’s a family recipe that connects to me an earlier generation. I grew up hearing countless stories about my grandmother, my Nanna. The stories painted a picture of an incredibly warm woman, an incredibly important person to my family, a matriarch, a much loved and much missed Nanna. She, very sadly, passed away when I was very young and my memories of her may be no more than imprinted stories, which I grew up hearing from my family. I have memories of lying on the bed with her, eating grapes, there are flashes of an old Quality Street tin, but really these memories are fleeting and few and far between. These stories had power and helped my me feel connected to Nanna, to create a bond. This connection grew even stronger as I grew up, especially as I started looking into her recipe box, and nothing created that connection more than a single recipe, my Nanna’s Gingerbread. In our family we refer to it as Parkin (we are a blend of Yorkshire and Lancashire folk after all) but truth be told it doesn’t fit the mould of what is traditionally classed as Parkin so, as not to confuse anyone looking for a traditional Parkin recipe, I call it a gingerbread.
My mum used to tell me that, every weekend, my Nanna would bake one of her gingerbreads and it would then sit in a tin, to be eaten throughout the following week with another at the ready to replace it the following weekend; if you know anything about gingerbread or parkin recipes you’ll know they get better with age, so this was the perfect cake to be nibbled on over a week. I would hear my older siblings talk about their memories of the cake and how, in their mind, the sign of a good nanna was a tin full of gingerbread. The connection to this cake and to my Nanna is so strong that my older sister, when she found out she was pregnant, told my mum she was to become a Nanna herself simply by presenting her with a tin of gingerbread and the simple declaration that ‘you’ll be needing this soon’. It was something I sadly never got to experience first hand, after my Nanna died, the handwritten recipe stayed dormant in her recipe tin for many years. After my niece was born, however, the tradition was reborn; these days, on visits to my parents house, now grandparents to three wonderful grandchildren, more often than not a tin can be found in the kitchen brimming full with a soft and squidgy gingerbread.
I have found, that over the years, baking this cake and sharing the recipe has given me a surprisingly strong connection to my Nanna and I think it is testament to how food can bond us together, across generations.
For Paid subscribers this week I have a truly fabulous cookie, spiced molasses gingerbread cookies stuffed with homemade salted caramel. Upgrade your free subscription to get access to this recipe, new recipes every week and access to a large backlog of existing recipes.
My Nanna’s Gingerbread
170g plain flour
170g wholemeal flour
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
170g unsalted butter
115g caster sugar
2 tbsp orange marmalade
340g golden syrup
2 large eggs
210ml milk
Preheat the oven to 150C (130C fan) and grease an 8-inch square tin, lining with a strip of parchment paper that covers the base and goes up two sides of the tin, securing it in place with a couple metal binder clips. Lining the tin like this means removing it after baking is much simpler.
Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and whisk together to combine. Place the butter, sugar, marmalade and golden syrup into a medium-sized saucepan and set over medium heat, stirring occasionally until everything is fully melted and combined. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before adding the eggs and the milk, whisking to combine.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients, gently stirring together. Don't worry about getting a perfectly smooth batter, a few lumps are fine, if you stir and mix too much this cake can crack on the top and become a little chewy.
Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake on the oven for around an hour or until well risen and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake come out clean.
Allow to cool for 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Whilst still delicious on the first day this cake actually improves after a couple of days and will keep up to a week.
Cookbook Corner
Wait, isn’t this what Nigella calls her cookbook reviews? I’ll need a new name but for now, cookbook corner.
This week there were two books that landed on my doorstep that I want to recommend. Both of these books come from, not just the USA, the same place, from two authors in NYC.
The first, from Yossy Arefi, is called Snacking Bakes and it was published this week. I actually had the chance to read this book many months ago, when Yossy asked if I would consider giving a quote for the cover. If you know Yossy’s work you know that was a very easy yes to give, her work is truly excellent. Not only are Yossy’s recipes incredibly well tested, they are simple but still packed full of flavour and a joy to make. This book is a follow on from her wonderful, smash hit book Snacking Cakes. The idea is a book full of recipes that are incredibly accessible, in fact, each of the 60 recipes is made with just one bowl and with readily available ingredients. Sometimes that sort of simple baking can sound uninspiring and dull, that is far from the case here as Yossy has worked her magic to make each of the recipes something you absolutely want to make. Recipes include such delights as Fudgy Sesame Oat Cookies, Triple Chocolate Olive Oil Blondies, Brown Sugar Peach Cake, Everything Bagel Biscuit Bread and so so many more.
The second, from fellow New Yorker Samantha Seneviratne (author of one of my all time favourite baking books The New Sugar and Spice), is Bake Smart, a book that dispels baking myths and eliminates baking fears to make you a more confident baker. If youre in North America this book is already out, in the UK you’ll need to wait a couple more weeks. The book is packed with fabulous recipes but also incredibly well written recipes, full of tips and advice that really educate the reader to make them a better baker. It is far from a dry educational textbook, its a joyous cookbook that wants to you fall in love with baking and take away any fear or nerves you might have when it comes to baking.
One thing that I think both of these authors and these books share is a magical touch with flavour, they can turn simple recipes into something special by using new flavour combinations, adding that little je ne sais quoi and both books would be well at home in any bakers cookbook collection. Big stamp of approval from me.
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