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My lovely French friend sent me some some French cookery magazines, and this tart was in one of them. The gingerbread isn't like our Parkin, it's a 'Pain d'épices', a spice cake. There's a recipe for one here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10695184/Pain-depices-recipe.html I love trying out new recipes with apples, and this tart was very different from the usual apple pie. You could buy a gingerbread loaf and crumble it. 2 packs puff pastry, 6-8 apples [I used Gala], 8 slices gingerbread, 50g butter, 50g sugar, 1 egg yolk, cinnamon Preheat oven 200C/gas6          you need a tart tin Roll out with of the packs of pastry and line the tin. Prick all over with a fork. Crumble the gingerbread and sprinkle over the pastry. Peel the apples and cut into quarters. Put these onto the gingerbread. Cut the butter into pieces and put these in between the apple quarters. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and cover with the second puff pastry. Make s

My lovely Polish neighbour and I enjoy making cakes together. I tasted a Polish gingerbread cake at her house recently, so thought I'd find a recipe and make one too. I had a look online, but some didn't seem to be authentic, some had strange ingredients, so in the end I used a mixture of several recipes, taking what I thought were good bits from each! The cake contains a mix of spices - ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, so I mixed together what I thought would give the cake a good spicy taste, without it being overpowering. Some of the cakes in the recipes were cut in half and filled with plum jam, some were iced with chocolate, so it seems as if there's as many variations with this cake as there are with some traditional British cakes. Preheat oven 180C/gas4           grease a 900g loaf tin The recipe is very easy - you melt 170g light brown sugar with 75g butter, 170g honey and 2 tbspn strong coffee granules[ I used Azera Espresso] in a pan. As soon as

This recipe is for a 'pain d'épice' [spice bread]  type of gingerbread - a French classic. Each country has its own version of gingerbread, but I love the French one best. I wanted to do something a bit different for a special tea, as I'd invited the French conversation group I belong to. I decided to push the boat out, so instead of making just a normal cake looking gingerbread, I made it into a sort of millefeuille version, and added chocolate to it. The basic recipe came from my French friend's mother, and unlike our English gingerbread, it uses several spices. It's not difficult to make, but making it into a millefeuille was a bit of a faff! You need: 100g of dark chocolate 100g of honey *200ml cold double cream 130g flour [my friend's Mum used rye flour but I didn't] 11/2tspns baking powder 2 tspns vanilla sugar 20g icing sugar for the spices: 1 tspn of cinnamon, 1/2 tspn ground ginger, 1 tpsn freshly grated nutmeg and 1 star anise [

I was inspired by a recent post on the excellent Strong as Soup blog           http://asstrongassoup.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/black-sticky-gingerbread-random-recipe.html    to look for a recipe my neighbour gave me for a gingerbread made with honey. This is a very different gingerbread from the dark moist one on Phil's blog. The method is unusual in that you put the dry ingredients into a bowl, then heat the honey and pour it over. It's got a good spicy flavour and as Phil said in his post, gingerbread is great for taking on an Autumn walk, or with your afternoon cuppa, or even as a dessert with some custard. The original French recipe used 'quatre epices' but I don't think there's much difference between that and our mixed spice, and I found some ground aniseed in a local deli, but you could leave it out if you don't like it. 250g runny honey 250g plain flour 100g caster sugar 1 tspn baking powder 1 tbspn vanilla sugar 1 tspn ground aniseed 1 tspn