Recipes/Desserts/Gingerbread Cake (Grammercy Tavern)

Ingredients

  • Cake release
  • 1 cup oatmeal stout or Guinness Stout (we typically end up using GF rice beer)
  • 1 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 tablespoons ground ginger (go ahead and make ’em rounded –jbash)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • Pinch of ground cardamom
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (original recipe calls for 1 cup – jbash)
  • 3/4 cup vegetable oil
  • Confectioners sugar for dusting

Method

Prepare

  1. Coat 10-inch bundt pan with cake release
  2. Preheat oven to 350F

Batter

  1. Beer/molasses goop:
    1. Bring stout and molasses to a boil in a large saucepan and remove from heat.
    2. Whisk in baking soda
    3. Cool to room temperature.
  2. Integrated liquid mixture:
    1. Whisk together eggs and sugars.
    2. Whisk in oil
    3. Whisk in molasses mixture.
  3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and spices in a large bowl.
  4. Add liquid to flour mixture and whisk until just combined.

Baking and unmolding

  1. Pour batter into bundt pan.
  2. Rap pan sharply on counter to eliminate air bubbles (I never do this –jbash).
  3. Bake about 50 minutes @ 350F, in middle of oven until a tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs adhering.
  4. Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes.
  5. Turn out onto rack and cool completely.

Serving

Serve cake, dusted with confectioners sugar, with whipped cream.

Notes

This can be pretty dense. Sometimes I separate the eggs, whip the whites a bit, and fold them in last to lighten the batter.

The cake can be very hard to unmold, especially with the simple "grease and flour the pan" method. Real cake release helps.

The reduced sugar is a consensus recommendation from various people.

Also makes very good cupcakes.

The original recipe was found on epicurious.