In Which I am possessed of a Christmas Spirit or Making Medieval Gingerbrede

The Frog of Green house at this moment has been possessed of a holiday spirit of late.   The tree was erected in the living room and adorned with ornaments and tinsel and the smell of (non-medieval) cookies have been wafting from the kitchen.   The other night was a night for gingerbread! I made gingerbread cookies and my version of medieval gingerbread.  I love gingerbread cookies first of all.  I love the molasses and spices and how they are soft and chewy and not overly sweet.   I love making them in gingerbread children shapes and then biting off their limbs and their heads and dunk them in cocoa, I'm just a cookie sadist like that I guess!   But medieval gingerbread is much different then our modern cookie and cake versions.   It was a candy rather then a baked recipe.   And it didn't even always have ginger in it!

Here's the recipe:
Gyngerbrede. Take a quart of hony, & sethe it, & skeme it clene; take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & throw ther-on; take gratyd Brede, & make it so chargeaunt þat it wol be y-leched;then take pouder Canelle, & straw ther-on y-now; then make yt square, lyke as thou wolt leche it; take when thou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leaves a-bouyn, y-stkyd ther-on, on clowys. And if thou wolt haue it Red, coloure it with Saunderys y-now.

So to make this I took two slices of store bought bread and toasted them.  I toasted them first at a medium temp then at a low temp to get them really toasty without burning them.    Then I grated them with a cheese grater.   It sounds odd but it worked well to make them into bread crumbs.   Then I heated about 1/4 cup of honey(I eyeballed it and didn't measure it)on medium heat and watched it and let it boil and skimmed the foamy stuff off the top for several minutes then I added several good shakes of ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and pepper to the honey.   Then I added the breadcrumbs until it held together well and then I pressed it out to about about 1/4 inch think onto aluminum foil I'd greased. Then I let it cool and cut it into diamond shapes.   

I liked this, it was spicy and chewy had a nice flavor from the honey and it had kind of candyish quality about it.  I'll definitely make it again, and try some variations on it (like leaving out the cinnamon) and maybe adding some butter, but I really liked it. 

 Here it is cut into diamonds

Here it is before I cut it out

Thanks much for reading, I hope there's happy holiday activities going on in your castle this festive season of the year!  Farewell till anon when I take to my kitchen to prepare another medieval recipe from scratch :)

Here's after I pressed it out