This truly is an old fashioned gingernut biscuit recipe! I was putting together a quick batch for a picnic over the weekend and realised I’d been making this particular recipe for well over 30 years. You know you have a winning recipe when you remember it by heart all those years later and still make them regularly.
It’s an awesome back pocket recipe for when you don’t have much exciting in the pantry, they also don’t melt which is a big bonus for Australian picnics and they don’t drop too many crumbs which is great for cleaning the car after a road trip.
We’ve been heading out on a few road trips again lately and working our way through many of these 25 fabulous day trips from Brisbane again before setting our sights on a few longer distance drives. These gingernut biscuits are a staple either way!
Now I know the original recipe came from a small softcover book, one of those black and white ones with no photos. I think it was Alison Holst but as I say that was over 30 years ago and I don’t have the original book so I make if from my head and I know its evolved a little from the original over the years and been scaled up to make a decent batch but this version works well every time. I often double this recipe, as they last well in an airtight container if they get the chance.
Now if you don’t know who Alison Holst is she’s a Kiwi icon. She’s been on cooking shows and writing books since before I was born and she basically ‘taught’ every Kiwi of my generation how to cook with nutritious, affordable everyday recipes. Which in turn fostered a love of local, fresh food and a bit more experimenting in the kitchen – with these old faithfuls to turn back to from time to time.
I turn the oven on to bake at 180°Celcius or fan bake at 170°Celcius as I get started, the trays should be ready to load by the time the oven is up to heat. Fan bake will cook and colour more evenly when you have multiple trays in the oven at once.
I also suggest lining your trays with baking paper as it speeds up the dishes afterwards but greasing them or using silicon baking sheets will also work.
Preparing the Cookie Dough
I was born in the UK, grew up in New Zealand and now call Australia home, so I definitely call these biscuits not cookies but for some reason, I’ve noticed that I call the uncooked mix cookie dough, no idea when I picked that up.
Something I really do appreciate with this recipe is that I can make it all in the one pot so if you start with a larger one than you need to melt the butter you’ll save time at the sink later.
Melt the butter together with the golden syrup. Stir in the sugar and then the beaten egg. Finally add the dry ingredients, the flour, baking soda and ginger. Then stir with a wooden spoon until fully combined, it will only take a few turns.
There’s not a lot of ingredients and they are things that are always in my fridge and pantry making these so easy to whip up at any time.
Getting ready to bake
Line up your lined baking slides next to your dough. Wet your hands just slightly and begin rolling the dough into smooth balls about the size of a 20c coin. Having wet hands stops the dough from sticking to you and helps get them sized evenly and smoothly for a more visual appealing end result.
Place the 2 trays into the oven at a time and bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.
Old fashioned gingernut biscuits
Yield: 24
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 13 minutes
Total Time: 28 minutes
A quick and easy gingernut biscuit recipe that is quite simply, THE BEST. Crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy in the centre with a delicious hit of ginger.
Ingredients
100 grams of butter (melted)
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 cups of raw sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cups of plain flour
Instructions
Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the golden syrup.
Stir in the sugar and allow to cool a little before the next step
Add beaten eggs, the baking soda, ginger and flour and stir with a wooden spoon until well mixed.
Line baking sheets with baking paper
Dampen hands to stop it sticking and roll the dough into balls, place on the trays
Bake at 180c (or 170 fan bake) for 10-13 minutes until golden.
Remove from oven and allow to cool before storing in airtight containers.
Notes
I use raw sugar in this recipe and a lot of my baking. It adds a delicious caramel flavour but isn't necessary for the recipe, you can use plain white sugar if that is what you have available or prefer.
I highly recommend doubling the ingredients in the recipe to make a double batch of 48 cookies, they keep well and it can be a great time saver. The recipe has been tested this way many times and works perfectly.
Do you love an old fashioned homemade biscuit now and again? What are your favourites?
If you found this recipe useful please consider saving it to Pinterest. It helps us, and it helps other home bakers to find the recipes they are looking for.
The secret to the best biscuits is using very cold butter and baking powder. We've made a lot of biscuits, but this easy biscuits recipe is the one we turn to the most (they are so fluffy!).
Dr Michael Mosley has confirmed that gingernut biscuits can help ease nausea and even morning sickness. While we might all be familiar with the old wives' tale, it has been proven that ginger does help tackle symptoms of nausea.
“There are some gingerbread recipes that are hard right after baking and need to sit for a few days to soften. Molasses and honey hardens gingerbread, but as the sugar absorbs moisture, it will get softer.”
Back in the 1960s, a few biscuit companies across Australia combined under one Arnott's banner. Arnott's tried to make things a little easier for themselves and create one national Ginger Nut recipe instead of sticking with the recipe from each state, which all had tiny differences in ingredients and cooking times.
But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.
Ginger nuts are not to be confused with pepper nuts, which are a variety of gingerbread, somewhat smaller in diameter, but thicker. In 2009, McVitie's Ginger Nuts were listed as the tenth most popular biscuit in the UK to dunk into tea.
Ginger biscuits also have anti-inflammatory effects, thereby are important for problems like rheumatoid arthritis, bursitis, ulcerative colitis and bursitis. It improves the absorption and stimulation of essential nutrients in the body.
Excessive consumption can cause problems with your stomach and/or intestines. It can cause dehydration symptoms and if you consume too much ginger, you may even become drowsy, dizzy or confused.
What's the secret for how to make the best gingerbread dough? Partly the secret is patience: it's really important to allow 30 minutes resting time before getting into the cookie cutting. Another good idea is to let the gingerbread cookies cool before decorating.
Unless the dough is so firm it becomes brittle, refrigeration will make the dough less fragile in most cases. Perhaps less important, the moisture levels may become a bit more consistent throughout the dough as well.
The World's Best Gingerbread. Victorian cook Sarah Nelson invented Grasmere Gingerbread® in 1854 in the English Lake District village from where it gets its name. A unique, spicy-sweet cross between a biscuit and cake, its reputation quickly spread and it is now enjoyed by food lovers all over the world.
The United Biscuits factory in Caldewgate was caught by the deluge that hit the region late last year and production was halted on 6 December. It could take "several months" to restart the brick ovens used on the site, the company told The Guardian.
Ginger nut biscuits first went on sale in the 1840s – although the original baker is sadly unknown. In the United Kingdom they were a popular product of classic biscuit maker Huntley and Palmer, although they've since stopped manufacture.
In general, a rolled biscuit of desirable quality has a golden brown, smooth and crisp crust without brown specks, and a tender and flaky crumb; it is expected to be symmetrical in shape with a high height, flat top and straight side (Learning and Food Resource of Oregon State University, 2012, see web references).
The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.
Embrace stacking. In biscuit-making, height and flakiness go hand in hand. Why? Because the layers of butter that get compressed and stacked as you build your biscuits are what create those flakey biscuit bits, and they also create steam in the oven — which helps the biscuits to expand as tall as possible.
While biscuits receive some leavening power from chemical sources — baking powder and baking soda — the difference between serviceable and greatness comes from the extra rise that steam provides. In order to generate steam, the oven must be set at a minimum of 425 degrees for at least 10 minutes prior to baking.
Introduction: My name is Stevie Stamm, I am a colorful, sparkling, splendid, vast, open, hilarious, tender person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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