A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an amazing book about gingerbread, I revisited it this week to make the pancakes.

The recipe calls to let the batter sit for a few hours at least so you really need to plan ahead and make it the night before if you want it for breakfast. We had breakfast for dinner thus negating that problem.. I did have to remember to make it in advance though.

They use mostly whole wheat flour which adds some texture and an almost nutty hint to the flavour and makes them healthy (at least that’s what I keep telling myself when I pour maple syrup over them)! The zest brightens the flavour up while the brown sugar gives the molasses like touch to them.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, spices and baking powder and the zest.

Melt the butter and whisk in  the egg, vanilla and milk.

Combine the two, and don’t worry if it’s a little lumpy you don’t want to mix it very thoroughly. Cover and sit in the fridge for at least a few hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready heat up your pan or skillet and melt a little butter in the bottom. I used a 2oz ladle to measure out each pancake, our pan did about 2 at a time at that size.

Once the pancake is starting to go brown around the edges flip over and finish cooking. If they’re not being served immediately I line a baking sheet with a clean tea towel and put it in the oven at 200F to keep them warm.

Wipe the pan with a paper towel between each batch and melt a little more butter so they don’t stick.

Best served with butter and maple syrup!

Recipe – from Gingerbread by Jennifer Lindner McGlinn
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Yields 14 pancakes at 2oz each (about 4″ wide)
160g Whole-Wheat Flour
40g AP Flour
60g Brown Sugar
1.5tsp Baking Powder
3/4tsp Salt
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
3/4tsp Ground Ginger
1/2tsp Ground Cloves
1/4tsp Grated Nutmeg
1tsp Orange Zest
1 Large Egg
16oz Whole Milk
2tsp Vanilla Extract
1.5oz Butter, Melted

I’m fairly certain I’ve mentioned my love of all things gingerbread flavoured before.. Apparently I mention it a lot at home as one of my Christmas presents this year was this fantastic book dedicated to gingerbread!

It was hard to narrow down what I wanted to make from it first but we finally settled on the gingersnap cookies! They have the perfect balance between spice and sweetness, with a crisp edge and a chewy centre. We’re certainly spoiled now though, no store bought gingersnaps are ever going to match up!

As a bonus, they’re relatively easy to make too…

All the dry ingredients are combined together, including ground cinnamon, ginger and cloves, whisk together to blend. Form a well in the centre.

Mix together the melted butter, molasses, sugar and egg and pour into the well.

Mix together to form a soft dough.. it is a very soft dough and it doesn’t look all that appetising right now.. tastes good though (not that you should eat raw dough, but if you’re going to this is a good one *grins*).

The next step depends on how you are going to shape them. If you’re going to roll the dough into balls by hand then chill the dough first and roll them once it is firm. I scoop my dough out so I scooped it while it was soft and then chilled them.

Once chilled roll in sugar.

Bake until the cookies have spread, are a light golden (which is hard to tell, I know) but the cracks still appear moist. The recipe recommended 10-12 minutes (at 350F) but we went for 15 and found they still could have gone for a minute or two more. Leave on the sheet to start cooling as they will be soft straight out the oven.

We found them the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea! They’re good for dipping too… or just on their own, but never just one at a time, that just didn’t work!

Recipe – From Gingerbread by Jennifer Lindner McGlinn
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250g AP Flour
2tsp Baking Soda
1/2tsp Salt
2tsp Ground Ginger
1 1/2tsp Ground Cinnamon
3/4tsp Ground Cloves
6oz Butter, Melted
225g Sugar
1/4cup Molasses
1 Large Egg

Last week, I talked about the relative ease, enjoyment, and benefits of making your own sodas.  I also shared the process of making a dandelion and burdock soda (a relative stranger to these shores, but an old friend to the English), a combination of many ingredients that yields a delicious, mildly sarsaparilla flavor with citrus-y undertones.  This week, I’d like to share the process for making a much simpler concoction: ginger brew soda.  It’s lightly sweet, refreshing, with a mild ginger bite.

Ginger brew has precisely four, very simple ingredients (well, five including the yeast… but I consider the yeast a utilitarian element, much like the bottle the soda is contained in): water, sugar, ginger and lemon juice.  They’re all available form every grocery store year round.

The key to a good ginger brew is using fresh ginger, peeled, then rendered into small pieces — you can take a fine grater to it, or if you choose to work smarter, not harder, you can use a food processor.  The smaller the bits, the greater the extraction of the ginger flavor.

Once you have your ginger ready to go, dissolve your sugar in water over low heat in a large pot (6+ QT).  When the sugar has dissolved, add your ginger and bring the mixture to a boil.  After the mixture has reached a boil, put the lid on the pot, kill the heat and let it steep for one hour.

Next you need to strain out all the bits from the liquid.  Again, in order to make sure I get everything out, I have switched to the old-school trick of using a clean tea towel, as it is by far the best method I’ve found — better than a strainer alone, better than multiple layers of cheesecloth.  Once you’ve emptied the pot through the tea-towel, bring the corners together and twist while grasping the bottom with a pair of tongs (hot liquid!) and wring out all of the liquid you can.  You’ll be left with a compact crumbly ball of spent ginger that you can add to your compost, and a very concentrated base liquid.  Return your base liquid to the pot and top the pot with cool water to 4½ QT.

Divide your soda into bottles — I use plastic 32 OZ bottles saved from previous store soda purchases, but you can also use empty 2 liter bottles (which are just slightly larger than a half-gallon).  I’m using plastic bottles for a few very important reasons.  First, since we’re going to be carbonating the soda using yeast (and the naturally occurring CO2 they produce), there is no way of judging just how carbonated the soda is without being able to give the bottles a squeeze — the bottles will get firmer as more CO2 is produced.  Second, there is no way to halt the carbonation process except by placing the soda in the fridge and cooling it sufficiently to shut the yeast down… if not, the yeast will continue eating the sugar until it’s gone, producing CO2 the whole while.  Your bottles will burst long before the sugar runs out, and there is no way of telling when to put the bottles in the fridge unless you can give them a squeeze, and you can’t do that with a glass bottle.

Add a very small amount of yeast to each bottle, screw the caps on and give the bottles a shake.  Most homebrew soda recipes will call for you to use bread (or baker’s) yeast, primarily because it’s readily available in any grocery store.  I use champagne yeast purchased from the homebrew store for several reasons.  It’s inexpensive at $1 a packet (and one packet will make a lot of soda); as a brewer’s yeast it’s better suited to this task; champagne yeast contributes little to no additional flavors; you will end up with yeast sediment in the bottom of your bottles, and bread yeast produces a very fine sediment that is ridiculously easy to disturb, where champagne yeast produces a coarser sediment that stays more compact.

Leave the bottles at room temperature until they are as carbonated as you desire.  As stated before, this is judged subjectively by giving the bottles a bit of a squeeze.  The firmer the bottle, the more carbonation is contained within.  I typically aim for a firm bottle with little bit of give.  This process can take anywhere from 8 to 48 hours, depending on more factors than I care to name.  While they’re carbonating, give the bottles a gentle shake every so often to keep the yeast suspended… we leave them on the kitchen counter and shake them whenever we walk past, every hour or so.

Once carbonated, immediately move the bottles to the fridge and allow to chill for 24 hours before serving.  This will slow the yeast to a crawl — it will not stop them altogether, but it’s near enough to a full stop as you’re gong to get.  If you don’t drink your soda within a week, release a little pressure from each unopened bottle to prevent them from possibly bursting from too much pressure.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that the carbonation process is a result of fermentation.  When yeast eat sugar, they produce CO2 and ethyl alcohol.  But… but! the amount of alcohol produced is in the neighborhood of 0.5% ABV or less — that’s one-half of a percent or less for those who like to have things spelled out — and falls within what the FDA classifies as “dealcoholised”.  You would have to drink a gallon or more to get the equivalent alcohol of a single average beer.  I personally do not consider this an issue.

I wanted to end the month with chocolate, I’ve managed to stay off it the entire month which is quite a feat for me! Wanting to make a slight twist rather than a ‘plain old’ chocolate ice cream I decided to make a sorbet instead. So, as a bonus this is dairy and egg free, assuming you’re using an appropriate chocolate, it’s vegan and lactose free, and it’s still yummy!

This really is nice and simple to make. Bring the sugar and water to a boil, add the cocoa powder and whisk it together. Here is where I failed a little and didn’t boil it out. My recipe said boil to get rid of the alkali taste, since I was using Dutched cocoa I didn’t think it would be necessary. Turns out I was wrong and it also gets rid of the powdery taste that the cocoa leaves otherwise.

I decided to up the chocolate and use the (specially imported by my Mum) 100% chocolate from Willie’s Cacao. This made it very dark, so not necessarily to everyone’s taste, but this recipe is good with semisweet (milk and white requires different ratios). Chop up all the chocolate and put it into a bowl, pour over the boiled cocoa mix.

Let it sit for a minute or two then whisk together. Bring up to volume with some ice, this helps cool it down, and gives the right ratio of water. It can be churned as soon as it is cooled, or it can be chilled overnight. If you do chill it overnight it may separate out but it’ll whisk back together just fine.

It does seem to get very hard once frozen, but it is very tasty and rich.

I wanted to serve this with something a little more interesting. Brandy snaps are something I’ve served ice cream in many times, their predominant ginger flavour would work nicely with the chocolate (unlike the sorbet they aren’t vegan). They’re very simple, just brown sugar and butter melted together.

Add some brandy and the mix will bubble right up. Stir together and add some flour and ginger. Spoon onto a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until they have become all lacy.

They will come out very soft and you need them to cool a little so you can pick them up and then mold them over a bowl (or in any shape you like, round a wooden spoon handle will give nice little tubes) while they’re still soft. Once they’re cool they will harden. Store in a cool, airtight container if you aren’t using them straight away.

Serve the ice cream in the brandy snaps, add fresh raspberries, et voila, a dessert fit for a king!