PETER GORDON’S GINGER AND SULTANA SHORTBREAD
A biscuit for Still Minding the Gap
When thinking about what biscuit to create I was curious to know if there was a favoured biscuit of Emmeline Pankhurst and the British women’s suffrage movement in the UK, or Kate Sheppard here in Aotearoa New Zealand. These wonderful women were fighting for gender equality when it came to voting rights, so it seemed fitting to see if I could honour them whilst we try to level another gender inequality.
It turns out that long before social media and online petitions, people campaigning for change often gathered over cups of tea and home baking. When the women’s movements of the late 1800s were working, they often made cookbooks as fundraising tools and they’d always include a ginger biscuit. Groups at the time were known as ‘ginger’ groups: a term meaning "a group of people who have similar ideas and who work together, especially within a larger organisation, to try to persuade others to accept their ideas.” (* Collins Dictionary).
So one of my favourite spices, ginger, seems the right spice to add to my buttery shortbread as it’s warming, powerful and definitely impactful. I’ve included sultanas as they remind me of the baking of my fabulous grandmother and matriarch of the whānau, Molly Gordon. Her plain shortbread was the best! She believed in equality for everyone, with every voice needing to be heard - she spent much of her life doing community work and was presented her QSM (Queen’s Service Medal) from HM Queen Elizabeth when she visited New Zealand in 1981.
These biscuits have been created in the hope that we can all close the gender- and ethnic- pay gaps. Molly would have been behind it 100%!
Ginger and sultana shortbread (makes 24)
INGREDIENTS
Oven 300g butter, at room temperature (if you’re using unsalted butter, add 2 pinches of salt to the mixture)
180g golden caster sugar (it’s ok to use regular caster sugar)
2 – 3 teaspoons ground ginger – well spiced
80g sultanas (or raisins or currants)
220g plain flour
120g cornflour (or rice flour)
40g rye flour (or wholemeal flour)
METHOD
Oven 175*C fan-bake / 180*C bake. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper
Place butter, sugar and ginger in a food processor and blitz 5 seconds. Scrape down the side of the bowl and blitz another 10 seconds, making sure no lumps of butter are obvious
Add the sultanas and blitz 3 seconds, scrape down the bowl and blitz another 2 seconds
Add the flours and blitz 5 seconds. Scrape down the bowl and blitz until the mixture just comes together
Tip onto a lightly floured bench and gently knead for a few seconds to bring the mixture together. Transfer to a clean plate and rest at room temperature 10 minutes or in the fridge if it’s hot
Take walnut sized lumps of dough, gently roll into balls using your hands and lay on the baking tray 6cm apart. Using your three middle fingers, gently press down to shape and spread the biscuits, till they’re about 1 ½ cm thick
Bake 15-17 minutes, rotating the trays 180* after 12 minutes, until they’re golden brown. Leave to cool on the tray for 10 minutes as they’re soft straight out of the oven, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight biscuit tin.
*If you don’t have a food processor then simply cream the butter, sugar and ginger. Chop the sultanas medium-fine and mix in, then mix in the flours to make your dough. Bake as described above.
PUT YOUR BISCUIT IN THE TIN
Now you’ve got the recipe
Show your support by dropping a biscuit in the tin