Recipe of the Day Categories:
 Recipe Home
Recipe Index
Recipe Search
Appetizers
Beef
Beverage
Bread
Breakfast
Cake
Chocolate
Cookies
Fish
Fruit
Main Dish
Pasta
Pies
Pork
Poultry
Salad
Seafood
Side Dish
Soup
Vegetable
Surprise!
![[Flag Campaign icon]](http://a1032.g.akamai.net/f/1032/81/30m/www.gamesville.lycos.com/art_gv/ribbon_small.gif)
Christmas Gingerbread House
Kindra Clineff
Buy This at Allposters.com
Ginger Jar with Orchids II
Art Print
Kruskamp, Janet
Buy at AllPosters.com
Decor au Citron
Gilbert ...
Buy This at Allposters.com
 
Ginger Jar with Peaches,
Apricots and Tapestry
Art Print
Speck, Loran
Buy at AllPosters.com
Jade Ginger Jar
Art Print
Kruskamp, Janet
Buy at AllPosters.com
|
|
Your
patronage of our affiliate
partners supports this web site.
We thank you! In other words, please shop at LBC
Gift Galerie!
Detail of Gingerbread Cookies Arranged on a Plate
Rich Reid
Buy This at Allposters.com
La Belle Cuisine
How to Make
Gingerbread
 
Home Cooking:
A Writer in the Kitchen
by Laurie Colwin, 1993, HarperPerennial
"No
one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook
in the
kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice
and menus
of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers."
~
Laurie Colwin
“Gingerbread,
that most evocative of nursery treats, has gone out of fashion and even
the revival in American cooking has failed to bring it back. You never see
it on menus or in bakeries, except in the form of gingerbread
cookie men
at Christmastime. [Home
Cooking was originally published
in 1988; no doubt that was more true then
than today. Ed.]
"I
love gingerbread in its true cake form – moist, spongy, and spicy... It
is strictly home food, but no one makes it any more. [We are trying to
change this!] Those who crave it get their fix from mixes [!], and if you
give them
the real thing, they appear confused. Why doesn’t their
gingerbread taste
that good? There is nothing to be said about mixes: they
are uniformly disgusting. Besides, gingerbread made from scratch takes
very little time
and gives back tenfold what you put into it. Baking
gingerbread perfumes
a house as nothing else. It is good eaten warm or
cool, iced or plain. It improves with age, should you be lucky or
restrained enough to keep
any around.
[And not only that, it is also a wonderful comfort food!]
"Gingerbread
exists in some form or other all throughout northern Europe. Florence
White’s classic Good Things in England, for example, has twelve recipes. Mrs. Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife, published in 1824,
has three. It is definitely food for a cold climate. Its spicy, embracing
taste
is the perfect thing for a winter afternoon. Ginger warms up your
stomach (and is believed by many to purify the blood). When you serve it,
once
they have stopped giving you a funny look, people often say: 'Gingerbread!
I haven’t had that since I was a child.'
"If
you are feeding sophisticates, you can either take them back to child-
hood
and serve it plain with a little whipped cream, or fancy it up by
adding
crème fraîche and a poached Seckel pear.
"I
have tried any number of recipes and have finally found the one I like
best. Its basic proportions come from a recipe for Tropical Gingerbread
in
a spiral-bound book entitled Charleston Receipts . This gem, which has
been published since 1950 by the Junior League of Charleston
(now in its 25th edition…) contains wonderful recipes for everything from Brunswick
Stew
to scones to shortnen’ bread and spoonbread. Tropical Gingerbread,
however, calls for coconut which I feel has no place in gingerbread at
all,
so I have felt free to make a few changes and additions to an
otherwise
excellent recipe.
"Instead
of the white sugar called for, I use either light or dark brown.
Light
brown makes a slightly spongier cake, and dark brown creates a
more sugary
crust. I also add two teaspoon of lemon brandy, a heavenly
elixir easily
homemade by taking the peel from two lemons, cutting very
close to get
mostly zest, beating up the peels to release the oils, and steep-
ing them
in four ounces of decent brandy. I have had my bottle for thir-
teen
years
and have replenished the brandy many times.
"Besides
the ginger, the heart of gingerbread is molasses. Now, there is molasses
and molasses and there is the King of Molasses, which is avail-
able in the
South but virtually unknown in the North. [This may have changed since
1988.] It comes in a bright yellow can and can be ordered
by mail…
Steen’s 100% Pure Cane Syrup.
[Updated
contact information: (800)
725-1654, www.steensyrup.com]
You do not need Steen’s to make gingerbread, but I see it as one of
life’s greatest delights: a cheap luxury.
The
following recipe makes one nine-inch cake:
1. Cream one stick [1/4 pound] of sweet [unsalted] butter with 1/2 cup
of light or dark brown sugar. Beat until fluffy and add 1/2 cup of
molasses.
2.
Beat in two eggs.
3. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and one very
generous tablespoon of ground ginger (this can be adjusted to taste,
but I
like it very gingery). Add one teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/4 tea-
spoon of
ground cloves and 1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice.
4. Add two teaspoons of lemon brandy. If you don’t have any, use
plain vanilla extract. Lemon extract will not do. Then add 1/2 cup
of butter-
milk
(or milk with a little yogurt beaten into it) and turn
batter into a
buttered tin.
5. Bake at 350 degrees [F.] for between twenty and thirty minutes (check
after twenty minutes have passed). Test with a broom straw, and cool
on
a
rack.
[Icing
is optional…]
Chocolate
Icing
1. Cream 1/2 stick [1/4 cup] of sweet [unsalted] butter. When fluffy
add
four tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa.
2. If you have some, add one teaspoon of vanilla brandy (easily made
by steeping a couple of cut-up vanilla beans in brandy – another
excellent
thing to have around), or plain vanilla or plain brandy. Then
add about
a cup of powdered sugar, a little at a time until you get the
consistency
you want.
This
cake is also delicious with lemon icing. Substitute for the cocoa the
zest
of one big lemon, one teaspoon of lemon brandy (or extract) and
one
tablespoon of lemon juice and proceed as in Chocolate Icing.
Lemon
icing, I have discovered, must stand around for a while in order
to bloom.
At first taste, it is impossibly sweet, but after an hour or so it
mellows
into something suave and buttery…
[Our
personal favorite with gingerbread is lemon sauce]:
Old Fashioned Lemon Sauce
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 large egg, beaten
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Combine all ingredients in a medium non-reactive saucepan. Cook
over
medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil.]
"This…
will feed six delicate, well-mannered people with small appetites
who are
on diets and have just had a large meal, or four fairly well-
mannered
people who are not terrible hungry. Two absolute pigs can
devour it in
one
sitting – half for you and half for me – with a glass
of milk and a
cup
of coffee and leave not a crumb for anyone else."
A little more insight from
 
More Home Cooking:
A Writer Returns to the Kitchen
by Laurie Colwin, 1995, HarperPerennial
"After
years of hands-on experience, I have come to three conclusions about
gingerbread. First, the ground ginger must be fresh. If your half-consumed
jar of ginger has dust all over it, throw it out and buy a new one –
ginger
loses its power after it has been sitting around for nine months or
so. If you live near an ethnic market that sells spices in bulk, buy your
ground ginger there. Otherwise, a fresh jar from the supermarket will do
fine.
"Second,
most recipes are very timid about the quantity of ginger. [I really
do not
understand this. It is, after
all, supposed to be gingerbread, is it
not?] You may start out mild
and wind up tripling the amount. I like a
heaping tablespoon, which may be
too much for some people but not
enough for others. This is a matter of
taste.
"Third,
never use ordinary molasses. It is simply too bitter – not
what you want. [Perhaps this is why some people maintain they do not like
ginger- bread!] Pure cane syrup is the name of the game, and I whole-heartedly
endorse that made by the C. S. Steen Syrup Mill of
Abbeville,
LA [see
above]. British recipes often call for black treacle,
for which
Steen’s cane syrup is a good substitute, or light treacle, for
which I use
Lyle’s Golden
Syrup, an English standby that can now be
found in many supermarkets
and fancy food shops.
"If
you happen to be a fan of English cookbooks (I seem to be addicted to
them), you will be amazed at the array of gingerbreads, from those dry,
breadlike ones called parkin to the dark, sticky ones that are more like
what we Americans know as pudding. After much trial and error, I have come
across two recipes that are sublime. Nevertheless, I realize hundreds more
are out there, yet untried.
"The
first comes from a British Penguin book, The Farmhouse Kitchen
by Mary
Norwak… It is easy and sensational.
Old-Fashioned
Gingerbread
1. Preheat the oven to 375
degrees F. and line the bottom of a buttered
8-inch round tin (2 inches deep) with parchment paper. (Parchment
paper
has come to have great importance in my kitchen, and it is my
opinion that
the person who invented it should get a Nobel Prize.)
2.
Melt 1/2 cup cane syrup or black treacle with 6 tablespoons butter.
3.
Beat 1 egg with 4 tablespoons buttermilk.
4. Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon
baking soda, 2 heaping tea-
spoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon cinnamon,
1/3 cup firmly packed
brown
sugar,
and a pinch of salt. Mix in 3/4 cup
dried currants
or raisins.
5. Add the egg mixture, then add the syrup mixture and mix well.
6. Bake 10 minutes in the 375-degree oven, turn the heat down to
325
degrees F.
and bake 35 to 40 minutes more. A few crumbs
stick
to a tester when the
cake
is done.
The
above recipe is an all-around hit and combines many of gingerbread’s
virtues. It is spicy, heartwarming, and cake-like. You do not need to add
one thing: no ice cream, no icing, no
poached fruit on the side. It is really
and truly good by itself. For some
time it displaced all others in my
kitchen, but people on quests are not
easily satisfied.
After
a while, I began to long for something new, and in another English book,
Delia Smith’s Book of Cakes, I found what I was looking for. It is
not
sticky, but moist and velvety. The name describes it perfectly:
Damp
Gingerbread
1.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch round tin (2 inches
deep) and line the bottom with parchment paper.
2.
Melt 9 tablespoons butter with 12 ounces (1 1/2 cups) Lyle’s
Golden Syrup.
3. Into a bowl sift 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour, 1/2 teaspoon
salt,
1 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1 tablespoon ground ginger, 1/2 tea-
spoon ground cloves, and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.
4.
Pour the syrup and butter onto the dry ingredients and mix well.
5. Add 1 beaten egg and 1 cup milk. Beat well. The batter, Ms. Smith
tells us, will be very liquid, and it is. Pour it into the tin and bake at
350 degrees
F. for about 50 to 55 minutes. (The middle should be
just set, with
the edge pulling away from the pan, and a tester will
bring out a few
crumbs.) Cool
the cake in the tin for 10 minutes
before turning out."
More Gingerbread:
Chocolate Gingerbread
Cranberry Gingerbread with Brown
Sugar Whipped Cream
Fresh-Ginger Pain 'Epice
(Martha Stewart)
Gingerbread Biscotti
Gingerbread Bundt Cake with
Lemon Glaze
Gingerbread Cookie Cutouts
(Chef Keegan, Chef Lisa)
Gingerbread Roll with Lemon Cream Filling
Marie's Rich Gingerbread with Candied
Ginger and Lemon Glaze
Prune Armagnac Gingerbread
Triple Ginger Loaf
Index - Bread Recipe Archives
Index - Cake Recipe Archives
Yummy Muffin Recipes
Holiday Central!
Index - Food Features
Daily Recipe Index
Recipe Archives Index
Recipe Search
|
