Ginger Biscuits (Ginger Cookies)

Easy Ginger Biscuits (Ginger Cookies)

These easy Ginger Biscuits are a bit different from a traditional ginger cookie or ginger biscuit recipe. I think of them as a cross between a flapjack and a brandy-snap. They are very quick to bake, only 10 minutes in the oven, and have a base of oats with sugar and butter, a small amount of flour and an egg. The ginger flavour comes from finely chopped pieces of stem ginger that are added to the mixture. Flaked almonds also give a bit of extra crunch and nuttiness.

This recipe is based on one that my mother used to make. She used candied peel, rather than stem ginger, in her recipe. I am not a huge fan of candied peel and I had a half-used jar of stem ginger left over from Christmas so I decided to try make a ginger-flavoured version. I was also looking for a baking recipe that did not use a lot of flour as I am finding it hard to get hold of this at the moment.

These Ginger Biscuits have a subtle ginger flavour which even those who are not big ginger fans seem to like. The biscuits themselves are chewy with a bit of crunch around the edges and are sweet and buttery.

Things you need to know about these Ginger Biscuits (Ginger Cookies)
  • They are very quick and easy to make. Just mix all the ingredients together and pop them in the oven for 10 minutes.
  • The only slightly tricky stage is getting the cooked biscuits off the baking tray. The key is to make sure that the baking tray is very well greased and that you do not try and take the biscuits off immediately they come out of the oven (they will be too soft) or leave it too long (they will be welded to the baking tray!). If you leave it for about 5 minutes, that is just about right and it should be quite straightforward to get them off.
  • Don’t leave out the pinch of salt. It makes a big difference to the taste of the biscuits as it balances out the sweetness.
  • They are very versatile. Have them with a cup of morning coffee or afternoon tea. Add them to lunch boxes. Or they are also a very nice addition to a bowl of ice cream.
  • I used stem ginger for this recipe. This is candied ginger in its own syrup which you can buy in most supermarkets. It is one of my favourite ingredients as a little goes a long way and, in addition to the globes of sweet ginger, you can also use the syrup as a flavouring. However, if you do not have stem ginger to hand, you could use pieces of crystallised ginger which can be found in the baking aisle in most supermarkets.
  • If ginger is not your thing, you could substitute the stem ginger for the same amount of mixed peel. Or you could just leave out the ginger and you would still have a delicious, oaty, buttery biscuit.
Other teatime treats

If you are a fan of ginger, you might like my Ginger and Pear Cake or Gingerbread Loaf Cake . If you are in the mood for a different kind of biscuit, you could try my Lavender Shortbread or Lemon Biscuits. Or if you are a savoury kind of person then Cheese Biscuits might hit the spot. I also have a lot of recipes for very easy loaf cakes including St Clement’s Cake, Apple Cake, Coconut Cake, Blood Orange Cake, Cherry and Almond Cake, Earl Grey Cake, Latte Cake with Salted Caramel, Lavender Cake, Lemon Drizzle Cake, Rhubarb Crumble Cake and Rum Banana Bread.

Ginger Biscuits
How to make Ginger Biscuits (Ginger Cookies)

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Ginger Biscuits

Ginger Biscuits (Ginger Cookies)

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 3 reviews
  • Author: Tastebotanical
  • Prep Time: 10
  • Cook Time: 10
  • Total Time: 20 minutes
  • Yield: About 30 biscuits or cookies 1x
  • Category: Biscuits
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: English

Description

These quick and easy Ginger Biscuits (or Ginger Cookies) are crisp and buttery with a subtle note of ginger.


Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
  • 100 g (4 oz) rolled oats

  • 100 g (4 oz) soft brown sugar

  • 100 g (4 oz) caster sugar

  • 1 tablespoon flour

  • 25 g  (1 oz) flaked almonds
  • Salt

  • 100 g (4 oz) butter

  • 1 egg
  • 50 g (2 oz) stem ginger

     


Instructions

  1. Set your oven to 170 C, 325 F or Gas Mark 3.
  2. Line two baking sheets with baking parchment.  Pour half a teaspoon of vegetable oil onto each sheet and spread over the entire surface using your fingers or a pastry brush.
  3. Put the rolled oats, soft brown sugar, caster sugar, flour, almonds and a pinch of salt into a large mixing bowl.
  4. Melt the butter in a microwave or in a small saucepan.  Add the melted butter to the dry ingredients.  Then stir in the egg.
  5. Finely chop the stem ginger and add it to the mixture.
  6. Drop teaspoons of the mixture onto the prepared baking sheets making sure that you leave a four centimetre gap between each one as they will spread out when they are in the oven.
  7. Put the baking sheets into the oven for 10-12 minutes.
  8. Remove the baking sheets from the oven and allow the biscuits to cool on them for five minutes before removing them with a palette knife or spatula.  Place them on a baking rack to cool completely.

Ginger Biscuits


This recipe has been shared on #CookBlogShare with Recipes Made Easy and #Fiesta Friday with Fiesta Friday and Antonia @ Zoale.com and Zeba @ Food For The Soul.

Loved this recipe? You may also like the following recipes. Or checkout the Recipe Index.
Lavender shortbread, lavender cookies, lavender biscuits, lavender hearts
Lavender shortbread
Ginger and Pear Cake
Ginger and Pear Cake

Gingerbread Loaf

Easy Gingerbread Loaf

Dark, moist and sticky, with a wonderful treacly sweetness and a hint of spice, this easy Gingerbread Loaf is the perfect autumn or winter treat. It is truly one of the easiest cakes to make and, if you follow my instructions (!), you will have very little washing up too.

Treats not tricks

I associate this cake with autumn and it has been a regular at Hallowe’en Parties and Bonfire Night celebrations over the year. When you have been out in the cold for a few hours, this is exactly the kind of cake that you need! It is not the healthiest recipe – and includes a lot of sugariness and quite a bit of butter – but I firmly believe that everyone needs the occasional sweet treat.

In my family, this cake is actually know as Trick Cake. This is because the finished cake looks very much like a chocolate cake although, obviously, it tastes totally different. When my youngest son was very young, he was adamant that the only cake that he would eat was chocolate cake. He was given a helping of Gingerbread Loaf, wolfed it down and announced that it was the best chocolate cake he had eaten!

An easy and versatile cake

This cake is made using the “melting” method. This means there is no faffing about with creaming butter and sugar or rubbing them together to resemble fine breadcrumbs. The butter is melted and, basically, all the ingredients are stirred together and then poured into a tin and baked. There is really very little likelihood of anything going wrong.

This cake also keeps very well. If you wrap the cooled cake in foil, it will keep for at least a week. In fact, it actually improves if it is kept as it will become stickier and the flavours will deepen. Needless to say, in my household, with three ravenous teenagers, the life expectancy of one of these loaves is generally measured in hours rather than days and they very rarely last a week!

Despite its autumnal associations, I make my Gingerbread Loaf recipe pretty much the year around. Partly because it is so easy to make and the also because it is so versatile. It is great with morning coffee or afternoon tea but it is also a really good cake to include in a lunchbox or a picnic or in your back-pack if you are going for a hike as it is quite robust. It has a sustaining quality which is a great pick-me-up if you are feeling a bit tired!

Gingerbread loaf

…but not very pretty!

The one slight negative point about this cake is that it doesn’t look particularly attractive. It is basically a big brown square! In order to make it a bit more attractive in the photographs, I was inspired to produce leaf silhouettes on the top of the cake. It is the matter of minutes to do this. You just need to gather some nicely shaped leaves (making sure that they are not poisonous!), wash and dry them, place them on top of the cake and then sift a little icing sugar over them. When you remove the leaves, you should get a nice leaf-shaped pattern to jazz up your boring brown cake!

Gingerbread Loaf

Other autumnal bakes..

If you are in the mood for an autumnal bake, you might also like to have a look at my recipes for Apple Cake, Ginger and Pear Cake, Blackberry Muffins, Cherry and Almond Cake or Latte Cake.

Gingerbread Loaf

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Gingerbread Loaf

Gingerbread Loaf

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 6 reviews
  • Author: Tastebotanical
  • Prep Time: 15
  • Cook Time: 60
  • Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
  • Yield: I large cake
  • Category: Cake
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: English

Description

This Gingerbread Loaf is one of the easiest, no-fail cake recipes.  It is dark, moist and sticky with a wonderful deep treacly sweetness and a hint of spice.  Perfect on a cold autumn or winter’s day!


Ingredients

Scale
  • 225 g butter
  • 225 g soft brown sugar (dark or light)
  • 1 tin of treacle (454 g)
  • 350 g plain flour
  • 1 tablespoon ground ginger
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 300 ml milk
  • 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 2 eggs

Gingerbread loaf


Instructions

  1. Set your oven to 140C, 275F or Gas Mark 1.
  2. Grease and line a square 25cm cake tin.  Do not use a loose-based tin – the cake batter is very liquid and will run out of any gaps!
  3. Put the butter, sugar and treacle in a large, heavy-based saucepan.  Heat gently until the butter is melted and the sugar has dissolved.  
  4. Sift the flour, ginger and cinnamon into the saucepan.  Stir to combine with the melted butter, sugar and treacle.
  5. Heat the milk either in a small jug in the microwave or in a separate pan until it is “blood heat”.  That is, warmed to the point where you can just keep your finger in the liquid without it being uncomfortable.   Stir the bicarbonate of soda into the warmed milk.  Then pour the milk into the large saucepan with the other ingredients.
  6. Whisk the eggs lightly and then add them into the saucepan.   Stir the mixture to combine.   
  7. Then pour the batter, which will be very liquid, into your prepared cake tin.
  8. Place in the oven and cook for 1 hour.
  9. Remove the tin from the oven, place it  on a cooling rack and allow the cake to cool completely before removing it from the tin.

Gingerbread Loaf


Notes

  • If you want to make your rather boring brown cake look a bit more fancy, you can use a little icing sugar to make leaf-shaped silhouettes on the top.  Instructions are included in the blog post.

This recipe has been shared on #CookBlogShare at A Strong Coffee  and on #Fiesta Friday at Fiesta Friday and #Baking Crumbs at Jo’s Kitchen Larder and Apply to Face Blog

Loved this recipe? You may also like the following recipes. Or checkout the Recipe Index.

Ginger and Pear Cake

Sticky Ginger and Pear Cake

This Ginger and Pear Cake brings together two flavours that are the best of friends. The spicy heat of ginger is the perfect counterpoint to the luscious sweetness of the pear. The syrup from the jar of stem ginger adds an additional hit of sugar which brings the flavours together and ensures that the cake is moist.

Another aspect of this cake which I really like is that it includes a secret pear! A whole fresh pear is added to the cake mix just before baking and ends up embedded in the cake. You don’t know about it until you cut into the cake. There is something really appealing to me, both in terms of flavour and texture, and also as it is a nice surprise, in including the pear in this way.

I was won over to stem ginger relatively recently. I have childhood memories of my parents being given jars of it at Christmas which sat in the cupboard until well past their use by date as no one really knew what to do with it! Years later, I saw a jar in the supermarket and made an impulse buy and decided to try and use it in a cake. The result was fantastic, with the stem ginger giving a complex gingery flavour unlike that provided by ground ginger. A few bakes later, I decided to add pear into the mix and this recipe is the result.

For me, one of the best aspects of baking is experimenting with different flavour combinations. If you like this Ginger and Pear Cake, you might also like Rum and Banana Bread and Lime Drizzle Cake with Coconut.

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Ginger and Pear Cake

Ginger and Pear Cake

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews
  • Author: Tastebotanical
  • Prep Time: 15
  • Cook Time: 45
  • Total Time: 1 hour
  • Yield: 1 loaf cake 1x
  • Category: Cake
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: British

Description

This sticky Ginger and Pear Cake brings together two flavours that are best friends!  Using stem ginger brings a complexity of flavour and luscious moistness to this easy cake recipe.


Ingredients

Scale

For cake:  

  • 125 g butter
  • 175 g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 175 g self-raising flour
  • 3 pieces of stem ginger
  • 4 tablespoons syrup from a jar of stem ginger
  • 1 large, ripe pear

For topping:

  • 1 piece of stem ginger
  • 1 tablespoon of syrup from a jar of stem ginger


Instructions

  1. Set your oven to 180 degrees centigrade or Gas Mark 4.
  2. Grease a 450 g loaf tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.
  3. Cream the butter with the sugar in a large bowl.  (I usually soften the butter for about 30 seconds in the microwave first as it makes it much easier!)
  4. Gradually add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture.  If it looks as if it is going to curdle, add some of the self-raising flour.
  5. Once the eggs have been incorporated add the rest of the self-raising flour.
  6. Finely chop your pieces of stem ginger and add them to the cake mixture along with the syrup from the jar of stem ginger.
  7. Spoon the cake mixture into your prepared loaf tin.
  8. Take the skin off your pear.  I find the easiest way to do this is with a vegetable peeler.   Cut the pear in half lengthwise and, using a small knife, remove the core and any pips.   Place the two halves of the pear on top of the cake mixture.
  9. Put the tin in the oven and bake the cake for 45 minutes.
  10. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. 
  11. When the cake is cool, remove it from the tin.   
  12. To decorate the cake, using a pastry brush, paint the top  with the ginger syrup.  Cut up the piece of stem ginger and scatter the pieces over the top of the cake.

Ginger and Pear Cake


Loved this recipe? You may also like the following recipes. Or checkout the Recipe Index.