Heather of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. Check out Heather’s blog for the complete recipe. I love ginger so I was really looking forward to this cake. The cake calls for fresh ginger, ground ginger and stem ginger preserved in syrup. This is the second recipe I have come across that calls for the preserved stem ginger, and I’ve yet been able to find it locally. I thought I would substitute ginger preserves, but in the end I just omitted this, since it was only a tablespoon.
Dorie posted on the Tuesdays with Dorie site that we should make sure that the pan we used was a true 9” square. I guess that some 9” square pans are really 9” if you measure them. I have a nice set of pans that my parents bought for me a number of years ago. I checked and my pan was exactly the right size.
I ended up grating the fresh ginger with a microplane grater, because as much as I like ginger I don’t really like biting into a big chunk of it. I think I got about 2 tablespoons, but it’s really hard to measure when it is grated. It may have been just a touch less. I also used dark chocolate rather than bittersweet chocolate as the recipe specified. I thought the dark chocolate would add a bit more sweetness, and provide a better balance with the ginger.
I baked this up and it was the most perfect looking cake ever. It was perfectly even on top, no cracks, no puffiness, just beautiful! It was a shame to add the chocolate glaze, but I wanted to anyway. (My husband tasted the crumbs left in the pan and said that it didn’t really need anything more.) My first attempt at the glaze was a bust. I’m not sure exactly went wrong, but the chocolate kind of curdled. The second try turned out just fine.
Some of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers thought that this was too gingery, but I’m not really sure that this is possible. I allowed mine to sit overnight, allowing the flavors to come together. I’m glad I let it have time because I thought that the flavors were nicely balanced. You can taste the chocolate and the ginger comes as a nice subtle taste at the end. I really like this a lot. I’m curious about trying the fruitcake variation. I’ll have to remember that for next Christmas.
Recipe from Baking from My Home you Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 212
8 comments:
Wow, that looks picture perfect! Great job! Really great!
Gorgeous photo.
I lessened the amount of ginger in my recipe.
Yes, the cake was even better on the second day! Your cake really looks amazing!
Your gingerbread looks gorgeous. i loved this recipe. The fruitcake variation sounded interesting to me too. I may have to try it.
It looks great! I love the closeup photo.
I'm with you... I don't think there was too much ginger at all! Looks fantastic.
Cake looks great. The spice, I thought, was just right.
Looks lovely! I used crystallized ginger in place of the ginger in syrup. Still yum.
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