It's new year's eve! Traditionally, this means ginger snaps. (it's not really a tradition, it's just the thing I do when we have people over and it's closing in on 1am and I want them out of my house. surprise! I wandered out of the living room to make cookies, stuff that in your face and gtfo. but slightly nicer than that.)
Since we're not hosting anything or going anywhere this year, and since December has been such an epic shitshow, I'm skipping the cookies and making Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Gingerbread Cake.
...you know, I kind of understand the recipe-blog urge to pontificate before the recipe. maybe I just like to hear myself talk. Anyway, this is a slightly modified version of Nigella's recipe. It's a gooey, spicy, chocolatey, decadent thing, and it's possibly my favorite cake recipe, ever.
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbs) butter
1 c. + 2 T dark brown sugar
2 T granulated sugar
3/4 c. golden syrup (sub half corn syrup and half honey- or all honey- if you don't have a tin of golden syrup lying around, dont sweat it)
3/4 c. molasses
1/4 tsp ground cloves (I'm still using allspice, fuck cloves, all my homies hate cloves, unless they're being poked into oranges)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 T warm water
2 eggs
1 c. milk
2 c. flour
1/3 c. cocoa
1/4 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter)
1 c. chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 325. Line a glass 10x13 pan with parchment paper. (You want glass because of the honey; if using golden syrup, use whatever pan your heart desires.)
In a large saucepan, melt the butter with the sugars, syrup, molasses, cloves, cinnamon and ginger. make your life easier by using a lightly oiled liquid measuring cup for the molasses and other syrups. or don't! enjoy being sticky.
Dissolve baking soda in water.
Take saucepan off heat, and whisk in eggs, milk and soda/water
Reserve ~1 tbs flour.
Sift remaining flour, cocoa, and salt into wet mixture and stir to combine
Toss the chocolate chips in the reserved flour, then fold in chocolate chips.
Bake about 45 min until risen and firm. The middle should still be a little damp under the set top, and will sink a little. . (I went an extra 10 minutes because I used a 9x13 pan, it went until the middle was set but not risen.) Cool in the pan.
Make glaze or frosting, if you want. Nigella has a ginger beer and chocolate glaze; I've also made this with a cardamom cream cheese icing, which is faaaabulous. (take a standard cream cheese icing- block of cream cheese, few tbs butter, powdered sugar until you like the consistency- and add 1 tsp vanilla and 1/2-1tsp ground cardamom.)
I like the way Nigella describes this- makes 12 fat slabs. This is technically a 1 bowl recipe, even if I magically always manage to dirty every bowl and utensil in the house; the flour sifting is entirely optional, but it will help reduce lumps in the batter.
The first time I made this was in 2010, when I ran out of molasses, had no corn syrup, and had to scrounge for as much honey as I could find in the cupboards. My early #disaster-kitchen days were full of me starting recipes without checking to see if I had all the ingredients. (There are several funny stories about that, actually, one of which led to me getting married. Remind me to make that honey cake recipe again.)
But, more importantly, the last time I made this was some time in 2011 or 2012, so I had no idea what recipe I'd used for it. But I did post about it on livejournal when I made it. Buuuut my LJ is friends locked, so I had to log back in. Which, of course, meant I had to reset my password. And that was one of the last posts I'd made! But the recipe I linked to went to a dead site. But! The Wayback Machine saved me! So here we are.
It smells so fucking good, you guys. The molasses, the spices, the chocolate- so. fucking. good.
