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Gingerbread Snack Cake
Warm Gingerbread is my grandmother’s all-time favorite cold-weather dessert, and it’s shockingly hard to find on most menus. Since she’s not big on baking, I decided to tinker, taste, and create for her what I think is the most pillowy and moist (I said it), most fragrantly spiced, most delightfully easy gingerbread snack cake to enjoy all holiday season long.
The smell of fresh ginger and cinnamon and deeply caramelizing molasses is next-level as this cake bakes, and it holds up well if you don’t finish the whole thing hot out of the oven and want to enjoy with coffee or tea or cocoa the next day.
I serve it with a little puddle of silky vanilla creme anglaise, but go right to warm heavy cream if that’s more your speed (or vanilla ice cream – cold OR melted!). Your holiday dessert repertoire just got a whole lot cozier.
Gingerbread Snack Cake
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Serves: 6-8
Gingerbread Cake:
1 stick unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for greasing the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1½ teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 (2-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 cup unsulfured molasses
1 cup boiling water
Crème Anglaise (yields 1 ¼ cups):
½ cup whole milk
½ cup heavy cream
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Instructions:
Gingerbread Cake:
•Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9x9-inch baking pan with butter and line with parchment paper, allowing the edges to overhang as handles. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
•In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add the butter and sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat again until just combined. Add the ginger and molasses and beat until smooth, stopping to scrape down the bowl as needed.
•Add the flour mixture gradually to the wet ingredients in the stand mixer and beat until just incorporated. With the machine running on low, slowly drizzle in the hot water and allow to mix until just combined.
•Remove the cake batter to the prepared pan and allow to bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
•Allow to cool in the pan for 20 minutes then remove from the pan. Feel free to serve warm or cool completely on a wire rack. Serve with a drizzle of the chilled crème anglaise.
Crème Anglaise:
•In a small saucepan whisk together the milk, heavy cream, and vanilla bean pod and seeds. Bring to a simmer while whisking.
•Place the egg yolks in a large bowl. Once the milk mixture has come to a simmer, remove the vanilla pod and gently pour some of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks. Don’t stop whisking while you pour the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks—this is called tempering. The goal with tempering is to warm the yolks without scrambling them. Once the yolks have been tempered, add the egg yolk mixture to the saucepan and place over low heat. Add the sugar and continue to heat while constantly whisking until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon, 1 to 3 minutes.
•To check to see if the cream has thickened enough, place a spoon into the mixture to coat and draw your finger across the back of the spoon. If the mixture doesn’t run, then the crème anglaise is finished. The crème anglaise will also be finished when it reaches 180ºF on an electric thermometer.
•Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into another bowl to catch any cooked egg pieces. Place this bowl over an ice bath. To make an ice bath, fill a large bowl with 2/3 ice and 1/3 water. Continue whisking the cream mixture until cooled to prevent it from cooking more (this cools your crème anglaise almost instantly!).
•Slice the gingerbread cake and drizzle the crème anglaise over the top.
•Gingerbread cake can be stored covered at room temperature for up to 4 days and crème anglaise in the refrigerator for 5 days.
Fun tip! If you want to have crème anglaise but don’t want to make it from scratch, warm up a pint of vanilla ice cream in a saucepan over medium heat until melted and drizzle over the top.
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