Welcome. I’m thrilled you’ve stopped by.
If you don’t know me, I’m Sydney Jane Baily, a USA Today bestselling author of historical romance, focusing mostly on Regency and Victorian stories. I am the daughter of two Brits from either end of London, and I love, love, love food from my homeland, from “forcemeat” to fish and chips, from Maltesers to most anything Cadbury! If you want to know more about my books, please go HERE. If you would like a free book, please keep reading to the end of the recipe for the book offer.
I want to share with you a favorite, and very old, recipe: CORNISH GINGER FAIRINGS
Fairing is the term for a treat bought at a fair, a word used at least since 1574. It’s also the name of a particular type of ginger biscuit (cookie), at least since F.T. Elworthy’s West Somerset Word-Book (1888). This particular fairing is also called “by the better class ‘gingerbread nuts.’”
So if you aspire to be one of the better class, i.e., not a motley-minded hedgehog, then you had best call it a gingerbread nut.
The bakery, Furniss of Truro (a city in Cornwall, England), states they’ve been making fairings “since 1886.” That’s a lot of Cornish gingerbread cookies . . . I mean, nuts.
Note: I’m adding cloves to the recipe because my mother always adds ground cloves to her apple pie, which my father adored. I put cloves in my own pies, both apple and pumpkin, and in my gingerbread, in my spice cake, and in all good and tasty Christmas treats. Go easy, though. Cloves can overwhelm other spices.
Ingredients for a baker’s dozen:
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup self-rising flour (or substitute with 1 cup reg. flour plus 2 tsp baking powder)
- 1/2 cup soft brown sugar
- 1 T golden syrup (or maple syrup, agave syrup, or molasses, which is my fav)
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- pinch of salt
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Grease a baking tray or line with parchment paper.
- Beat together the butter and sugar.
- Add the syrup. Mix well.
- With a fork or whisk, stir together the dry ingredients.
- Add to mixture and blend well.
- Divide into about 12 walnut-sized balls.
- Place each on the tray and press flat. I use the bottom of a juice glass.
- Bake for approximately 15 minutes or until dark-golden brown with a rustic surface.
Enjoy!
If you would like more very old ginger recipes, I included some in the back of my book The Gingerbread Lady, which you can get for free by signing up to my newsletter HERE. This is a sweet romance, but if you find yourself running your gaze across my bookshelf, the majority of my series are on the spicy side. Not ginger spicy, but steamy spicy, always with a rollicking-good story and characters who fall in love!