This rather old fashioned recipe seemed perfect to star as one Mac learnt from his Grandma – not least because it actually came from my Grandma.

After Grandma died, my mum found a whole stash of recipe notebooks that she’d kept. These exercise books had been taken on holidays, filled in after dinner parties, and annotated heavily. Every time Grandma ate something she liked, she tracked down the recipe – from the chefs on a cruise ship to her friends and family.

My Grandma was a brilliant cook. She made delicious meals and puddings for our whole family of eighteen every Sunday for years. But she wrote down these recipes in her own special shorthand – and sometimes, quite a lot of vital information was missing! When I started, I didn’t have much beyond a list of ingredients and some timings. The rest I had to make up as I went along. And eventually, I ended up with this recipe.

I wanted to keep this recipe as close to her original as possible, since Mac was supposed to be making it just as his grandma did. If I were starting from scratch, I might include some crystallised ginger, or some allspice – and you might want to try that!

Grandma’s Gingerbread

Ingredients

• 150g golden syrup
• 100g butter
• 150ml milk
• 1 egg
• 200g sieved plain flour
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°C / fan 140°C / gas mark 3

Melt the syrup in a pan with the butter and milk

Add an egg and mix in

Take off the heat and beat in the flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda

Pour into a greased and lined 900g loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes before turning the temperature down to 150°C / fan 130°C / gas mark 2 for the last 20 minutes (you might want to cover it with foil for the last part, if it’s looking like it might burn). Check it after ten minutes too, as some ovens will cook it faster.

Enjoy with a cup of tea!