I felt like baking this morning. I usually don’t care about anything but coffee, but this morning, after taking 130 pictures of birds and squirrels, I wanted something warm and sweet with my coffee. So I made gingerbread, which is one of the simplet breads I can bake. I also, coincidentally, took pictures of it, something I usually forget to do.

After looking at the yummy pictures, I’ll give you the recipe. I tend to overbake my breads and cakes because a little underbaking goes a very long way to ruining the cake, but a bit of overbaking doesn’t ruin it. Also, I like baking gingerbread in a loaf pan rather than a cake pan and I have found that using a loaf pan adds about 5 minutes to the baking time.

This is considered a spicy recipe, but I’ve never found it spicy. Maybe it’s me:

2-1/4 cups of white flour
2 (or 3 if you like it sweeter) tablespoons of sugar
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder (or soda – either will do)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup molasses
1 cup very hot water
2 eggs
1/2 stick of butter, melted (30 seconds in the microwave does it for me)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Beat the eggs with the sugar and melted butter. I used a regular eggbeater. Cleaning up the big mixer is too much work for Friday morning. Mix everything else together. You can use a mixer or a wooden spoon. It’s a bread, so you don’t want to overbeat it. Add the egg mixture and mix some until it looks … well … mixed.

Spray the inside of a loaf pan with oil or use a paper towel dipped in oil. You can skip this if you have a deep and sincere faith in the power of non-stick pans. I go with the oil, but hey, it’s your loaf. Put the batter in the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees Celsius). Put the gingerbread in the oven and set the timer (I really believe in timers!) to 50 minutes. At about 30 minutes remaining, lower the temperature to 325 F (165 C). When the timer goes off, put the cake on a rack to cool. As soon as you can handle the pan without burning yourself, turn out the gingerbread and let it cook a little bit more. This is typically served with honey butter, but I’m fine with it with nothing but some good coffee.

If you use a cake pan, subtract five minutes off the baking time.

It tastes really good.

Categories: baking, Food, Gallery, Photography, Recipes

Tags: baking, gingerbread, Marilyn Armstrong, Photography, recipe