Ginger Bread Cook Book

By G2 Entertainment

The term gingerbread can refer to all manner of moist cakes, sweet loaves and hard biscuits. The most common ingredients include ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, honey, treacle, dates, sugar and cloves. Ginger was originally used medicinally to settle upset stomachs, so biscuits and cookies were soon being sold in pharmacies, as well as monasteries and markets. By the end of the 18th century, gingerbread was extremely popular in towns like Market Drayton in Shropshire.
Today, gingerbread refers to soft cakes and harder cookies like gingerbread men, which are a staple of children's parties, particularly around Christmas. Softer cakes are more popular in the United States, while the Belgians and Dutch tend to prefer a crumbly variant that is usually topped with butter and served at breakfast.
This wonderful new ebook features 20 ginger-bread recipes guaranteed to get the taste buds tingling, from the classic gingerbread men, gingerbread houses and Christmas tree decorations to more modern twists such as gingerbread brownies, gingerbread latte fudge and maple gingerbread layer cake with salted caramel sauce.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G2 Rights
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781782812913

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The term gingerbread can refer to all manner of moist cakes, sweet loaves and hard biscuits. The most common ingredients include ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, honey, treacle, dates, sugar and cloves.

We get the word from the Latin zingiber, which was translated into French as gingebras. This concoction was usually a sweet dessert made from honey and spices that was supposedly brought to Europe by an Armenian monk, Gregory of Nicopolis, in the 10th century. Having become popular where he settled in France, bakers took his gingerbread recipes to Germany, Scandinavia and medieval England.

Ginger was originally used medicinally to settle upset stomachs, so biscuits and cookies were soon being sold in pharmacies, as well as monasteries and markets. By the end of the 18th century, gingerbread was extremely popular in towns like Market Drayton in Shropshire.

The Europeans who sailed across the Atlantic to North America took the recipes with them, although they used molasses instead of sugar when they arrived, which produced a more spongy pudding.

Illustration

The Striezelmarkt in Dresden, Germany is one of the oldest Christmas markets in the world

Illustration

Today, gingerbread refers to soft cakes and harder cookies like gingerbread men, which are a staple of children’s parties, particularly around Christmas. Softer cakes are more popular in the United States, while the Belgians and Dutch tend to prefer a crumbly variant that is usually topped with butter and served at breakfast.

Gingerbread is extremely popular in German Christmas markets. The hard biscuits are often iced and decorated with sweets. The Swiss bake a sweet dessert called biber, which is a thick cake filled with marzipan. A Russian version is made with rye flour, eggs and spices, and is often filled with treats before being glazed with icing.

The English have a fascination with gingerbread men. This involves cutting the dough into a rough human shape, carving facial features, and baking them into biscuits. They can then be decorated