How to Make Gingerbread Cake - The Victorian Way

I've just made a note of one of my favourite recipes, gingerbread cake. It's truly delightful. bicarbonate of soda, warm milk and eggs. Begin by creaming the butter. I always use salted butter unless the recipe asks for sweet butter in which case I use unsalted. Miss Cowley in the dairy has been very busy. We usually use between three and four pounds of butter a day in the kitchen. Now I'm going to add the sugar, the eggs which I'm going to give a little whisk before I add and now the spice. So we've had eggs from home, sugar from the West Indies and spice from the East Indies. What an international cake. I'm now going to add the flour a little at a time with the treacle. You could use a lighter colour treacle but it wouldn't be so rich. This is quite a cheap cake to make now that they've reduced the taxes on sugar a few years ago. It's quite nice for servants or for a family to have something a little luxurious. And just to get the last bit of treacle out I'm going to use a little warm water just in the bowl to make sure we get the best of the treacle and finally to a little warm milk a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda right into the middle and now mix it all in. Now that the mixture is nice and smooth you need to line with butter and brown paper a tin and then pour the mixture in and now to take it to the oven. Now that the cake has been in the oven for about an hour I'm going to take it out and let it stand to cool. This cake is really well loved by the servants and I'm going to serve this to the top servants table the one that myself and Mrs Warwick sit on in which case once it's cool I'm going to cut it up for display. There you are gingerbread cake. Mmm delicious.