Albertje's Boterkoek recipe

I have been listening to an audiobook set in the Netherlands this past week. It is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom and my review is the middle of the next trio to be published here as soon as I've finished one more book - might be a Jimi Hendrix biography, might be a novel about a suicidal American teen.

Albertje's Boterkoek 

Anyway, part of The Hiding Place is set in pre-war Haarlem where Corrie's mother is frequently baking cake to celebrate various birthdays. This reminded me of our celebrating a couple of Dutch people's birthdays by eating Boterkoek while we were in Portugal last winter. And that reminded me that I had never gotten around to baking Albertje's Boterkoek recipe which she so kindly translated and wrote out for me.

Boterkoek is more like a soft cookie-style biscuit than a cake. (That's the British meaning of biscuit, not the American which is more of a scone.) The word literally translates as butter cake and there is a LOT of butter in the recipe. I guess that is why it is a traditional birthday celebration food - one should only eat it once a year!

Ingredients
225g plain white flour
170g brown sugar
200g salted butter
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Place all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix together until combined. It helps if the butter is already at room temperature for this.

Press the resultant 'dough' into a loose based tin and put the tin onto a baking tray. My tin did leak a little liquid from all the butter so the baking tray is basically just to catch this.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the Boterkoek is golden on the top. Leave to cool before attempting to remove it from the tin.

Serve cold. To be traditional, serve in slices, with freshly brewed coffee, to a gathering of friends.