gingerbreadmam.comhome made, mam made ginger puddings, ginger wine, cinder toffee, shortbread…

I’m delighted to announce The Gingerbread Mam received one of the highest northeast food accolades over the weekend at the NewcastleGateshead EAT! Festival 2012, which ran for three days from Friday 20^th July to Sunday 22^nd July. My ‘Very Sticky Ginger Syrup Sponge’ received GOLD in the awards, not bad for a mother of three, who still bakes everything from home.

The ‘EAT!’ festival is a celebration of food and drink from around the North East. Thousands of visitors arrived to sample some of the very best regional food.

Each stallholder was invited to submit one product to be judged by the festival foodie panel. The festival team presented the commended GOLD award while I was busy selling on my stall on Northumberland Street. It came as a lovely surprise and I’m still pinching my self. I have to say, I was completely blown over, and would like to thank the all the judges who voted for Team GBM. I met some really wonderful people during the event and would like to thank the organisers and everyone who visited for making it the food calendars highlight of the year.

This month I was very proud to be asked to come and talk to the lovely Middleton WI ladies about ‘ginger’! The talk took place in the old village hall and there was around 25-30 ladies all eager to learn and find out all about ginger. Despite the lashing rain outside it was a really sticky hot evening so to get the girls in the ginger mood we started with a glass of ginger wine on ice. There was plenty of more tasters too, hot ginger syrup sponge and a piece of melt in the mouth ginger pokey soon got the girls craving more ginger.

After finding out how The Gingerbread Mam started and the kind of ginger influences I’d had through life I told them how my passion for food and drink came about from the very first memories I had of baking with my Nannas, Some  of the recipes I use now are from Nanna Gladys’ original handwritten recipe book which got passed to me when she died a few years back.

During the talk the ladies learnt how to make a ginger beer plant from scratch, using yeast, sugar, ginger and water. We named our plant ‘George’ and all names got put into a hat and one lucky lady got to take George home and look after him for the next 7 days, feeding & watering him until he turned into a lovely bottle of firey ginger beer!

Seen as the talk was all about ginger…the ladies had a competition going and they all made ginger snaps and I got to judge the winning biscuit! Not easy I can tell you, some of these ladies have been baking for years and all entries were fab everyone slightly different-they were all winners to me! A great enjoyable evening was had by all, they made me feel so welcome I felt like a celebrity cook