If it’s a blog birthday then gingerbread must be on the menu.

Today’s Gingerbread Bundt Cake recipe takes its ginger side very seriously. Ginger joins many other warm spices in the cake batter and it’s used to flavor the sweet syrup that is drizzled over the baked cake. Finally, crystallized ginger in the whipped cream lends a delicious bite that’s a nice accompaniment to each slice.

Gingerbread Bundt Cake

Ingredients:

Ginger Syrup (recipe follows)
Butter to grease pan
Turbinado sugar to dust pan
1 ½ cups packed light brown sugar
1 cup vanilla porter or milk stout
⅔ cup vegetable oil
½ cup molasses
½ cup sour cream
3 eggs
2 ¼ cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¾ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking soda
⅛ tsp ground cloves
Pinch of ground cardamom
Ginger Whipped Cream (recipe follows)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 10 to 15–cup Bundt pan with softened butter and dust with turbinado sugar.

2. Whisk together light brown sugar, porter, oil, molasses, and ginger reserved from the syrup. Whisk together sour cream and eggs until smooth then whisk into the porter mixture.

3. Sift together flour, baking powder, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, salt, baking soda, cloves, and cardamom. Whisk into wet mixture in 3 to 4 increments.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until a tester inserted in center comes out clean and cake pulls away from edges of pan, about 1 hour. Cool cake in pan on a wire rack for about 45 minutes.

5. Poke cake with a skewer then drizzle the ginger syrup over top. Invert cake onto a rack. Allow to cool completely.

6. Serve cake with the ginger whipped cream.

Serves 16

Ginger Syrup

Ingredients:

½ cup sugar
½ cup water
½ cup minced fresh ginger

Directions:

1. Bring all syrup ingredients to a boil in a saucepan set over medium-high heat.

2. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer the syrup for 10 minutes.

3. Strain syrup into a small bowl, reserving ginger.

Ginger Whipped Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream
2 Tbs sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
Chopped crystallized ginger

Directions:

1. Whip cream to soft peaks.

2. Add sugar and vanilla then continue to whip to medium-firm peaks. Stir in some crystallized ginger.

Recipes from Cuisine Magazine

It’s my birthday!

It’s Your Birthday.

Song comes courtesy of the very fine Vera Ellen.

I’d love to have Vera over for some cake. We’d dance around the kitchen and sing “Do do do do do” into our spatula mics. Then I would give her a hug and thank her for the brave bleakness of this cracking song.

“It’s all I wanted
my whole life”

Check out Vera Ellen on Bandcamp where you can buy her music.

Cheers!