Velvet Antlers fresh gingerbread & lemon icing

John Watson of Stone Country emailed last night to say he was coming up from Glasgow for the day for some bouldering in Glen Nevis. To me, this meant one thing – get baking.

Dave has sworn by the powers of my gingerbread for some time now, and is, not to blow my own trumpet or anything, directly responsible for ascents of at least two 8c+’s in Scotland and some of the hardest boulder problems by Dave and his climbing partners (Michael Tweedley being a big fan).

I meant to take a photo of my evenings endeavours this morning, but I wasn’t out of bed fast enough, Dave and John had already waded in.

The recipe, with a few Velvet Antlers alterations, is from good old Nigella ‘Domestic Goddess’ Lawson. The copy of her book I use actually belongs to Dave 'Domestic Goddess’ MacLeod, who can whip up a mean batch of biscuits, let me tell you. So, if you want the ultimate crag food that is guaranteed to get you results on a chilly winter’s days climbing, you want to get baking….

For the gingerbread:

150g unsalted butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
2 teaspoons fresh, finely grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
250ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 2 teaspoons warm water
300g plain flour

For the icing:

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
175g icing sugar
1 tablespoon warm water

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C/gas mark 3.

Melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup, treacle, ginger and cinnamon together. Take off the heat and add the milk, eggs and bicarbonate of soda.

Sieve the flour into your batter slowly, whilst stirring, or else it goes lumpy! You’ll end up with a very liquid batter, hopefully.

Pour it into a tray lined with baking parchment and cook for ¾ hour – 1 hour. (A knife should come out clean.) When you take it out the oven, lift out the tray and leave it on a rack for a couple of minutes and then peel the paper off, or it goes soggy. Leave there to cool.

Once cooled, if you can wait that long, I usually can’t, crack on with the icing. Stir the lemon juice in first, then add the water bit by bit and slap it on your deliciously sticky gingerbread.

How easy is that? It’s a doddle, and guaranteed to make you climb harder. Let me know how you get on.