Ginger crunch

New Zealand's most beloved slice: buttery shortbread base, set ginger icing, aggressively gingery

Origin: New Zealand

From the journey of Ginger.

The Edmonds Cookery Book occupies a position in New Zealand's cultural life that has no precise equivalent in any other country's culinary history. First published in 1908 by Christchurch baking powder manufacturer Thomas Edmonds (under the 'Sure to Rise' brand that had made him wealthy and that remains on every tin of Edmonds baking powder sold today) the book began as a promotional pamphlet designed to drive sales of his product and grew, edition by edition, into the definitive reference text for New Zealand home baking. It is New Zealand's best-selling book of all time, across any category. Its instructions are plain, its recipes reliable, its tone utterly without pretension. Generations of New Zealanders learned to cook from it, and its absence from a New Zealand kitchen is still, in many households, considered faintly eccentric. The Edmonds book compiled the practical baking repertoire of New Zealand's British settler communities (adapted for local ingredients, New Zealand conditions, and the particular pragmatism of colonial homemaking) and among its recipes, ginger crunch holds an almost canonical position. The form it takes is the New Zealand 'slice': a baked traybake cut into rectangles, served at morning or afternoon tea, found in every café cabinet from Auckland to Invercargill. The base is a crisp, buttery, ginger-spiked shortbread; the topping is a thick, opaque, set icing made not with water and icing sugar in the conventional way, but by melting golden syrup with butter and ground ginger over heat, then stirring in sifted icing sugar off the heat to produce a smooth, glossy mixture that pours like cream and sets, on the still-hot base, to a firm, matte, intensely gingery layer. The result is one of the great textures in baking: the crunch of the shortbread base meeting the clean, resistant snap of the set icing, followed immediately by the melt of both on the tongue. It is found in every New Zealand bakery, café, and school tuck shop, and it functions as a form of national emotional shorthand in the way that only the most deeply embedded foods can: ginger crunch means New Zealand, means morning tea, means a particular quality of light through a kitchen window on a winter's day. The icing ratio is critical and not to be adjusted. The 2:1 proportion of golden syrup to butter, three tablespoons of syrup to 75g of butter, is what produces the characteristic set: firm enough to require a sharp knife and a decisive pressing cut, but melting instantly on the tongue with a clean sweetness balanced by the heat of ground ginger. A higher proportion of butter produces a soft, fudgy icing that never fully sets; too little butter and the icing is brittle and glassy. The recipe below is the canonical version.

Ingredients

Base

  • 200 g plain flour
  • 125 g unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1cm cubes
  • 75 g caster sugar
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp baking powder

Icing

  • 75 g unsalted butter
  • 3 tbsp golden syrup
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 150 g icing sugar, sifted

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan / 200°C conventional. Line a 20x20cm square baking tin with baking parchment, leaving an overhang on two sides to allow easy lifting. The tin size is important: a larger tin produces a thinner base that bakes too quickly; a smaller tin produces a thick base that won't crisp properly.
  2. Combine the flour, caster sugar, ground ginger, and baking powder in a large bowl. Whisk together to distribute the raising agent and spice evenly through the flour. Add the cold cubed butter.
  3. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients using your fingertips, working quickly so the warmth of your hands does not soften the butter excessively. Lift the mixture as you work, allowing it to fall back into the bowl: this aerates it. Continue until the mixture resembles coarse, even breadcrumbs with no large lumps of butter remaining. It should hold its shape when squeezed but fall apart when the pressure is released.
  4. Tip the breadcrumb mixture into the prepared tin and press it down firmly and evenly using the back of a spoon, the flat base of a glass, or your fingers. The base needs to be compact and uniform in thickness to bake evenly. Pay particular attention to the corners, which tend to be thinner.
  5. Bake for 18–20 minutes until the base is deep golden brown across the entire surface, including the centre. A pale base has not developed the toasted, shortbread flavour that the recipe depends on. It should smell biscuity and nutty when done.
  6. While the base is in its final few minutes of baking, make the icing. Place the butter and golden syrup in a small saucepan over a low-medium heat. Stir gently until the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Do not boil; you are only melting. Remove from the heat the moment everything is liquid and combined.
  7. Working off the heat, add the sifted icing sugar and ground ginger to the butter-syrup mixture. Stir vigorously until completely smooth with no lumps. The icing should be thick but pourable: the consistency of warm custard. Work quickly, as the icing begins to set as it cools.
  8. Remove the base from the oven immediately when golden. Pour the warm icing over the hot base at once: the heat of the base helps the icing flow and level. Spread quickly and evenly with a palette knife or the back of a spoon to reach all four corners. The window for spreading is short: the icing begins to set within 60–90 seconds.
  9. Leave the slice undisturbed at room temperature until completely cold; at least 1 hour, ideally 2. The icing must be fully set before cutting. When ready to cut, lift the slice from the tin using the parchment overhang. Use a sharp, heavy knife and cut with a single, firm downward press; do not saw. Sawing drags the icing and tears the base. One clean press per cut.

Notes

Store in an airtight container at cool room temperature for up to 5 days. Do not refrigerate; cold causes the icing to weep and the base to toughen. Ginger crunch is best the day it is made, when the contrast between the crisp base and the snapping icing is at its most defined; by day two it is still excellent. For a more intense ginger flavour, increase the ground ginger in both the base and icing to 3 teaspoons each. The icing sugar quantity can be increased to 175g for a thicker, more opaque icing layer that is firmer on the cut.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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