Houstonist Cooks: Gingerbread

It's cold, it's December and the Christmas holidays are right around the corner (how it sneaks right up on us, every year, is just baffling). This year, things are kinda tight in the money department, so, rather than head to Neiman's (or the "it's alla dollah" store), we're planning to give homemade gifts and baked goods to friends and family. The warm, rich spices and gentle, unrefined sweetness of gingerbread is on our gift list. Here's our adaptation of a pretty damn good recipe we found (we just wanted more gingery, warmy spice than the original called for - it was too "meh" for us).

Dense Gingerbread

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup unsulphured blackstrap molasses (Grandma's)
3/4 cup honey (local is luscious)
1 cup tightly packed dark brown sugar (we are toying with using piloncillo)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk (2% - organic is our preference)
2 packed tablespoons grated fresh ginger root
Lemony, sweetened whipped cream, to serve

Preheat the oven to 325. Lightly grease an 8 x 8 square cake pan (or spray with Baker's Joy) and line with parchment, allowing opposing sides of paper to hang about two inches over the edge of the pan, This allows for easy cake removal.

Combine the butter, water, molasses, honey and brown sugar in a medium saucepan and place over low heat. Stir until the butter is melted, and all of the ingredients are well blended. Remove from the heat, pour into a large bowl and set aside to cool.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, all-spice and cloves, and set aside. When the molasses mixture feels just warm to the touch, add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in milk. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter in four parts. Lumps are okay, don't over work the batter. Stir in the grated ginger.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the top of the cake springs back when touched and a toothpick or skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for 15 minutes, then, using the overhang of parchment, lift the cake out of the pan and cool completely on a wire rack before cutting, it will "settle" some as it cools. Whip a pint of whipping cream with 1/4 cup powdered sugar and the zest of a lemon (you can get all crazy and mince some crystallized ginger and fold into the whipped cream...just saying)- dollop next to a serving of gingerbread and enjoy.

For "small gift loaves", use either a pan which makes six small loaves, or get some decorated "wee loaf pans" from the dollar store, or wherever aluminium bakeware products are sold in your area. Spray with Baker's Joy (we're pimping a product, but, it works crazy good) and fill 1/3 of the way with batter, bake 20 - 40 minutes (ya gotta eyeball the little pans). Feel like this is Scrooge-like? Give these with a jar of lemon curd (lemon and gingerbread is like peas and carrots...seriously).