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The spicy smell and taste of this cake just screams Christmas. The recipe came from Cuisine at home magazine, which I recommend for its great cooking tips, delicious recipes and total lack of ANY ads.
Gingerbread
Bundt Cake
For the
syrup, heat:
½ c. each granulated sugar, water and minced fresh ginger.
For the cake,
whisk:
1 ½ c. packed
light brown sugar
1 c. 2% milk
2/3 c.
vegetable oil
½ c. molasses
½ c. sour
cream
3 eggs
Sift:
2 ¼ c. AP
flour
2 t. each
baking powder and ground ginger
1 t. ground
cinnamon
¾ t. freshly
grated nutmeg
½ t. each
ground allspice and salt
¼ t. baking
soda
1/8 t. ground
cloves
Pinch of
ground cardamom
For the
whipped topping, whisk:
2 c. heavy
cream
2 T. granulated sugar
2 t. vanilla
extract
Chopped
crystallized ginger
Bring syrup ingredients
to a boil over medium high heat; reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 10
minutes. Strain syrup, reserving the ginger.
Preheat the oven
to 350 F and liberally spray a 10-15 c. Bundt pan with PAM and coat with
turbinado sugar.
Whisk brown
sugar, milk, oil, molasses, and reserved ginger. Whisk together eggs and sour
cream; whisk into the other wet ingredients.
Sift together
dry ingredients.; whisk into wet mixture in 3 to 4 increments. Pour batter into
prepared Bundt pan. Bake 1 hour or until
cake pulls away from the edges of the pan and tests done with a toothpick. Cool
45 minutes in pan. Poke cake all over with skewer or meat fork; drizzle ginger
syrup all over the top. Invert cake onto a plate [tap pan to release, if
necessary]; let cool completely.
Whip the
cream to soft peaks; add sugar and vanilla. Whip to medium firm peaks. Top
slices of cake with whipped cream and garnish with crystallized ginger.
Chopped fresh ginger smells amazing.
Turbinado sugar is raw sugar, but if you don't have it in the cupboard, granulated sugar will work great.
Crystallized ginger is sometimes labeled candied ginger. It's supposed to be useful for settling stomachs. Most grocery stores carry it, and it is a nice garnish for this cake. But it isn't absolutely necessary.
The kitchen, heck, the whole house, smelled like Christmas.
I used Reddi-Wip for Dave's tasting piece. He gave it two thumbs up.