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.