Ginger with Ginger

A recipe I came across this morning from A Spoonful of Sugar

Ginger Crunch

Base:
200g plain flour
100g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger (organic is particularly pungent)
125g softened butter (unsalted)
40g crystallised ginger chunks, roughly chopped

Icing:
150g unsalted butter
4 tbsp golden syrup
270g icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp ground ginger

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 9″ square tin with baking parchment. (I don’t do anything fancy here. Just squish it into the tin and the base will push into the corners nicely. No need for scissors!)

Put flour, sugar, baking powder and ginger into the bowl of a food processor and pulse briefly in lieu of sifting. Tip in the butter and pulse. When half-mixed, add the ginger pieces and continue pulsing until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. If it clumps together claggily, you’ve gone too far. It’ll still taste fine, though.

Press crumbs evenly over base of the tin. Bake for approximately 30 minutes until puffed up and golden brown. Do not remove from tin. Put tin on a wire rack.

Before the end of the cooking time, prepare the icing. Melt the butter and golden syrup together in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Tip in the sifted icing sugar and ginger and stir well. Cook for another minute or two–this prevents the butter from “leaking” out of the icing–then quickly pour the icing over the still piping hot base. Shake the tin gently–with oven glove on!–to even it out and ensure icing gets all the way to the corners, then leave to set.

When set cut into squares or bars. Store in an airtight tin or plastic tub. It makes rather a lot!!