I am so happy to have a post published at Huffington Post this week, where I looked how mothering differs, generation to generation. Would love and appreciate if you could read it, at your leisure. Thank you.
After last week’s rather heavy post about labels, I figure we’ll go easy this week, with a recipe. I realize you guys probably don’t eat/ read/ think about gingerbread outside of December, but the advantage of living in a tropical country with no defined seasons is, we eat whatever we want, whenever we want and not worry about being out of season. I know, I live on the edge.
I have an obsession with spiced baked goods. When I see ‘cinnamon’, ‘nutmeg’, ‘ginger’, ‘black pepper’ in recipes, I want to make it and eat it right there and then.
I came across this nearly 4-year old recipe for gingerbread loaf, from one of my favorite recipe haunts, Chow.com, and told my sister that we were baking this. Of course, as usual, I didn’t have half the spices required so we substituted a couple of things, and the cake still turned out delicious (go check the original recipe for the original spices – but the beauty with spiced cakes is that you can substitute a few spices, and they will work out pretty well).
Make it, make it now. It’s really good by itself, or with some ice cream, or a cup of coffee.
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon mixed spices (cloves, nutmeg, coriander, dill) - you can use allspice as well
- 1/2 cup well-shaken low-fat buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
- 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
- Heat oven to 350°F and arrange a rack in middle. Coat a 9-inch-by-5-inch loaf pan with butter, dust with flour, and tap out excess.
- Combine flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and mixed spices in a large bowl. Whisk to aerate and break up any lumps; set aside. In a separate medium bowl, stir together buttermilk and vanilla until combined.
- Combine butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until light in color and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in molasses until well combined then add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until well incorporated.
- Stop mixer and scrape bowl and paddle (mixture will look separated and curdled). Add one third flour mixture beating on low speed just until flour is incorporated. Add half buttermilk mixture and once batter is smooth add another third flour mixture. Add remaining buttermilk and mix until incorporated. Add remaining flour mixture, and beat until incorporated and smooth.
- Pour into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and cake is pulling away from sides of pan, about 40 minutes.
- Cool cake in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
The post Tasty Thursday: Gingerbread Loaf appeared first on Writing, Wishing.
