Gingerbread Cake

This recipe is a variation of the Yorkshire Gingerbread recipe made by Clarissa Dickson Wright in the first series of 'Two Fat Ladies' and is printed in their companion book, Cooking with the Two Fat Ladies, which is currently out of print, but you can find second-hand copies for a pretty good rate these days.

I have altered her recipe to include whole wheat flour and adjusted the cooking times for cupcakes.

My version:

Ingredients

1 cup - whole wheat flour

2/3 cup - self-rising flour

2 tbls - ground ginger

1 tbls - ground allspice

1/2 tsp - salt

1 tsp - baking soda

1/2 cup (1 stick) - unsalted butter

1/2 cup - packed dark brown sugar

3 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup - molasses

Method

Preheat oven to 340F

Sift together flours, ginger, allspice, salt and baking soda into a bowl.

In a separate bowl cream butter and brown sugar until very soft.

Beat the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture a bit at a time until fully incorporated, then mix in the molasses. Gently fold in the dry ingredients a bit at a time.

Pour into a greased 8x8 cake pan.

Turn oven down to 325F and bake for 50-60 minutes. Cake is done when the top springs back when gently pressed.

tarabu's 2 cents:

Clarissa says to let it cool in the pan and that you should store it in an airtight container for a few days before eating. Mine does not even get the chance to cool before I have eaten some. I made this into cupcakes this evening - I ate three before they were all out of the pan.

They are very chewy and thick with the molasses and I can definitely suggest that if you have dental work like partials, bridgework or braces, that you should probably let it cure for a couple of days or the trauma of cleaning your mouth may outweigh the spicy goodness in your memory.

A note on the baking - if you are using a square pan, it needs to be an old 2.5+ inch deep metal or glass casserole type pan. If you are using a shallow pan like the disposable ones or the kind for making layer cakes divide the batter between two pans, otherwise the batter will pour all over your poor oven as it rises.

If you are going to make cupcakes (like I did today) make 30. I know it looks like it only needs to make two dozen, but you'll have some overflow - and not in a cute muffin top sort of way, but in a 'Who's got a chisel?' sort of way. Bake cupcakes for 25-30 minutes.

Clarissa recommends eating it spread with butter or served with clotted cream and sliced ginger in syrup.

I say it's also good with maple cream cheese and apple cider. There's no apple cider in my house so I will have to settle for a rum toddy.

*contented sigh*