This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for Gingerbread
Baby Cakes; sounds festive, yes? This week’s host is Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories. You can visit her blog to get the recipe for these
little holiday cakes. And don’t forget to check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see the links from all the bakers. I think this is
a recipe that will get switched up a bit, and I know that some folks won’t make
baby cakes, so this will be a good one to check out all of the variations.
I did make baby cakes, but I only had two 4” pans. I halved
the recipe and made two 4” cakes and one cake in a small oval baker. I figure
that would be fine, but the baking time would likely be different. These cakes
have a lot of different spices, including pepper. I have made spice cookies
with pepper before and I like the extra spiciness it adds. But I like pepper
and so if you don’t like pepper, you would likely struggle with this one. This
cake also contains a lot of molasses, which is a very aggressive ingredient.
For me, that’s mainly what I could taste in these. I didn’t taste the pepper.
I have no idea how long I baked these, but I am pretty sure
that it was double what the recipe specified. I kept checking the cakes,
knowing they were not done, baking 5 more minutes, 5 more, 5 more, etc. I did
cover them with foil after about 25 minutes as it seemed like the edges of the
cakes were getting over baked. They looked great when they were finally done. I
served these with plain whipped cream, and as I said before, all I could taste
was the molasses. They were good but not great. My husband liked them more than
I did, as they reminded him of a cake he’d had in England growing up. I think I
would add less molasses, and then the flavor wouldn’t be quite so strong.
Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages
247-248
9 comments:
So sorry you weren't a huge fan of this one... however, your mini cake is adorable. Love the whipped cream and powdered sugar on top!
Your baby cakes looks so cute with a dollop if cream. I thought the flavour too strong as well. Will have to keep looking for a better recipe as I do love gingerbread. One person suggested David Lebovitz's gingerbread recipe.
The molasses can be pretty overpowering. I thought these cakes were alright, but only with an added garnish for sweetness. Yours look great with that little dollop of cream!
Sorry you weren't a fan. Loved these. Used cane syrup and that made tons of difference.
It certainly is a strong flavor, but your picture is great! Please visit my blog and enter my cookbook giveaway. Blessings, Catherine www.praycookblog.com
Like your husband, we also thought it tasted just like the English treacle cake. Delicious, and definitely a favorite for us around the holidays.
Beautiful cake. I think these would be good with a lot less molasses - they definitely have potential.
Such a sweet little cake with such a strong molasses taste. We just couldn't eat it. I love ginger but could hardly taste the ginger because of the molasses. But they were cute!
I agree - the pepper taste wasn't very prevalent; I don't remember how long I baked mine for, either, since my pans weren't a traditional shape.
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