SRS - I see you've been busy purging nasty alien Exe files from your PC. Just wack 'em with that emoty hunts sauce can.

I fell guilty posting in here when those fat fighting threads are ongoing. I'm not in any serious need of major weight loss and I don't often eat much of my own baking - just a piece or so.

SRS - the practice of baking sweet gingerbread in a can (and traditionally most gingerbread is a sweet quickbread and not a cookie) may have originated in the USA during the Depression - I'm not sure. It's one of those things you either grow up with or you don't.

My Great Grandmother told me it wad done long before the Depression (and she should have known! She was already a grandmother in 1929) and it was just a matter of thrift and common sense. You could bake many more breads all at once in empty cans than you could in loaf pans.   I suppose it saved on firewood but since in her day, the stove was used both for heat and for cooking, it woulda been going all winter.

Sadly, my Grandma, her daughter, passed away last year. My mum promised me all her handwritten recipes including her Gigerbread in a can but I've yet to see it.

The way I was raised, Gingerbread shaped like a cookie is called Pfefferneuse. Gingerbread Quick Bread is called Gingerbread. It's not quite a cake it has a much denser and wetter texture. When you take a bite, it sticks to your teeth and roof of your mouth but in a delightful way! Grandma and Great-Grandma's Gingerbread in a can was almost black in color and they'd roll it one more time in crystal sugar before wrapping in wax paper (they didn't have parchment) and then putting it into a clean coffee can to seal with a lid.

The best size coffee cans were the 1 pound cans whch aren't available anymore. most Coffee cans only come in 12 or 14 ounce sizes now.

I'm gonna call my mother and ask for that recipe. I want it so badly now I can taste it. Grandma used to top it only with freshly whipped cream and maybe some candied ginger