Flying; or, the best gingerbread ever, with a few hints on cookery

I have been Flying along on the housework front, you may be glad to hear (or not as the case may be), and am now feeling quite overcome with heat and exhaustion and am in dire need of Cake.

Looming domesticity

Today I did step up a gear - the Bedtime Routine is cracked (clean up the house just before bed - 20 mins - piece of cake), then the Gratitude Diary (thank goodness I can lie down now), and the sinks are shiny, shiny, so this morning I went a little further and put on lace-up shoes.

I think the Fly Lady's shoes would be cleaner (and probably shiny)

The Fly Lady is quite firm about this, and insists that you get up in the morning, get fully dressed, including Lacing Up Your Shoes, but I in my innocence and ignorance started Flying wearing ballet pumps. (They do have bows, permanently tied, and somehow I thought that I could get away with this.)

Have very High Hopes

But no, we Stay-at-Home Mummies (does running a business from home validate or invalidate this epithet?) have a nasty tendency to end up on the sofa if we can kick our shoes off easily, not to mention leaving said shoes lying around cluttering up the place . . . and yes, she's right, yesterday afternoon I suddenly found myself on the sofa, shoes on the floor, on the way to nodding off - and I wasn't even in the right Zone.

I had washed the mattress cover and patchwork quilts from our bed when I should really have been decluttering the sitting room where there are cupboards which have not seen the cold light of day in aeons (especially the yarn cupboard, which has to be approached under cover of darkness because it all has a nasty habit of tumbling out and revealing its excess when I dare to open the door).

Held together firmly

So it was lace-up shoes today, and my lovely Dottie Angel apron wrap to hold it all in - I have found that there is nothing like a nice pinny to make me feel domestically competent, but I am afraid that I peaked too early, in spite of Having High Hopes (no 1 on the list of Dottie Angel Dos) on the housework front.

Calming Dottie Angel traycloth and cookery book accessorized by food stains 

There is nothing like scrubbing down the B&B to bring on severe cravings for Tea and Cake, and so I rustled up some of the most delicious gingerbread you could imagine (for the children, of course), baked in the Aga, but it works just as well in other ovens.

Cake tin

This recipe goes back a long way - I won't tell you how many years but here are its beginnings in my school cookery book, or Domestic Science as it was termed - nothing creative about domesticity there, Being a Housewife was an Important Job (scientific rather than airy-fairy), and a full-time one at that (I am beginning to think that Being a Fly Lady is a full-time job as well, and am already looking forward to my next holiday).

Inspiring drawing of gingerbread

Please don't be put off by the fact that I only got a B+ for this - I have refined the original concept over many decades, and would draw your attention to the A I received for my macaroni cheese, which went into the Open Day Display (I think my drawing of the toast garnish is quite inspired, almost as inspired as my drawing of the gingerbread squares).

A very wonderful drawing of toast triangles

And what about my breakfast tray? There was no mucking about there, we girls were taught to warm the pot and put half a glace cherry on our grapefruits before laying up a tray to impress invalids and husbands as we tripped upstairs to give them breakfast in bed. And didn't it all come in handy for running a B&B?

Model breakfast tray for model housewife

So here is your recipe for lovely sticky gingerbread made in the Aga (or whatever cooker takes your fancy). Being so ancient, the quantities are imperial - I have given metric conversions but not tested them.

Delicious gingerbread

Ingredients:
8 oz (225g) self-raising wholemeal flour
1 level teaspoon (tsp) bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp mixed spice
4 oz (110g) unsalted butter
2 oz (50g) dark muscovado sugar
4 oz (110g) black treacle
4 oz (110g) golden syrup
2 eggs
1/4 pint (150ml) milk

Shallow rectangular baking tin, preferably non-stick, approximate size 8in x 11in (20cm x 28cm) - can be a little bigger as this will just make shallower pieces of gingerbread - greased and base lined with baking parchment or greaseproof paper.


Method:
Sift dry ingredients (flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and spice) into a large bowl and mix together, making a well in the centre.
Melt butter, sugar, treacle and syrup together gently in a saucepan - do not allow to boil or you will have toffee instead of gingerbread.
Pour the melted mixture into the centre of the dry ingredients and mix together gradually until smooth.
Beat the eggs into the milk and add to the mixture gradually, beating well as you go.
Pour the mixture into the tin (it is quite a wet mixture) and make sure the top is level.

In the Aga (two oven):  put the grid shelf on the floor of the top oven, and the plain shelf on the second set of runners, and sit the tin on the grid shelf. Turn once half way through.
Conventional ovens: 325F/gas 3-4/160-170C (fan ovens tend to need a lower temperature).

Cooking time: 35-40 mins. The gingerbread is ready when it is beginning to shrink from the sides of the tin, and the top springs back when pressed (in the centre) lightly with your finger .

Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack. Cut into big pieces or small as your fancy (or greed) takes you when completely cool if you can wait that long.

Time for tea

My cookery book says serve hot for tea - yum!

Look how Pomona has become rotund with grief

[I must stop baking so much cake as the Ploughboy is heading back to university next week, and the General marches off to be a fresher this weekend. I shall become positively rotund with grief if I carry on like this; I thought sending off number two would be a piece of cake in itself, but as the fatal day approaches I feel my heartstrings a-quiver and the tears waiting in the wings . . .  Princess Bunchy and the Aged Ps will be all alone but for the dogs and the hens and the pigs and the spiders, oh so many spiders, the feather duster has been much in play.

Shoes that mean business and a faithful friend in adversity

She tightens her apron strings and marches firmly on into the future with High Hopes and tight-laced shoes.]