Years ago, I had gingerbread down pat. So much so that I even sold it at a coffee house. But, that was back in my "baking" days. Needless to say, I can't locate the recipe. Anyone have a good... no; great... gingerbread recipe?

I make This one quite often and it has always been a hit.

My favorite for cake-type gingerbread:

OLD-FASHIONED GINGERBREAD CAKE
Serves 8, Makes one 9”x9” cake

2¼ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
¾ cup unsulphured molasses
¾ cup sugar
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup milk
1 large egg

¾ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup candied ginger

powdered sugar


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a 9”x9” pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and cocoa. Set aside.

Beat the butter, molasses, sugar, buttermilk, milk, and egg in the bowl of your mixer on low speed. Add the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until the batter is smooth and thick, ~1 minute. Be careful not to over mix or you’ll end up with tough gingerbread. Fold in the cranberries and candied ginger.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the center of the over for 35 to 45 minutes or until the top springs back when lightly touched and the edges have pulled away from the sides of the pan. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Recipe from "Cook's Illustrated"

That recipe is from *The Last Course, the Desserts of Gramercy Tavern* by Claudia Fleming. I have made it many times and I will echo the praise for it. I find it to have more of a Fall/Winter-y flavor profile, so that's when I usually make it. Be sure to use a regular strength molasses vs. black strap, which makes the cake too bitter, IMO.

I've made with great success the stem gingerbread recipe from Nigella Lawson's How To Eat. It is sticky, rich, spicy and wonderful. The hardest part is staring at the loaf in it's wrapping of waxed paper and tinfoil for the required two days. It is worth the wait.

Well, you sure do know how to conceal your true feelings, Zora. You scarfed down a little cupcake-sized piece of gingerbread prepared with blackstrap molasses one particularly stressful morn back in February.

I love gingerbread period, but I am particularly fond of a recipe I found on 101 Cookbooks (Heidi Swenson? Swanson's blog) for Sticky Gingerbread. It may have been adapted from Regan Daley's from *In the Sweet Kitchen*. Like Nigella Lawson's recipe, it calls for blackstrap. (I'm at the DC library now and just lost my post when trying to open a second window, so you'll have to look for it yourself.) Emily Lucchetti also has a great recipe or two.

Funny about these food trends. It used to be everyone would warn you against the nasty health-food store blackstrap goo, but it's making a well-deserved comeback and has its place in my world, at least. I like gingerbread that is very, very moist and find it's always best when a combo of freshly grated gingerroot (spring for the Hawaiian organic at WFM or the fresh Thai ginger that Heinz Thomet sells late in the summer at Dupont Circle), powdered ginger and crystallized ginger or candied ginger in ginger syrup are used.

Dorie Greenspan has a recipe for CHOCOLATE gingerbread (Nigella does something similar) that she posted on Serious Eats. It tasted disappointingly ordinary the first night, but spectacular the next day. In general, all gingerbreads are better the next day provided they're not overbaked.

How to eat it? If you're not doing the chocolate frosting or lemon icing that some prefer, that is, if you're like me and crave your gingerbread moist and slightly warm (I heat squares in the oven, wrapped in foil), acompany it with a good homemade, chunky applesauce that you cook down with apple cider, a little sugar and a little lemon juice (spices, too, if you'd like). Make sure the applesauce is ice-cold as a contrast. Soft whipped cream, too, for you. Tall glass of milk for me.

I wasn't making a generalization about blackstrap molasses, nor was I concealing my true feelings about your gingerbread--just in the particular case of the Guiness Stout ginger cake recipe in question. In it, the stout is already providing quite a lot of bitterness, which then becomes too much in concert with blackstrap.