jumbo cake
Happy New Year! It’s been a minute. (I probably said that in my last post.) December was busy, as always. I’m certainly placing some guilt on myself for not posting very often, even though I have been baking just as much as usual. Last month was spent making my tried and true recipes like tiramisu and holiday cookies. I did make some new recipes that were great, so that was nice.
We recently picked up some stout from one of our local breweries and while I don’t drink beer often, I love drinking porters and stouts in the winter. Honestly they’re good any time of year, but the flavors are more geared toward cold, cozy months. We had been wanting to find creative ways to bake with it, so I first made mustard stout pretzels, then earlier this week made a vegan chocolate stout cake. Both were great! I admittedly have never made a gingerbread cake before, and never grew up eating it, so I wanted to try my hand at that.
The recipe I came up with is slightly adapted from the Gramercy Tavern Gingerbread recipe, which is beloved by many. I made some tweaks and really dig what I came up with. I wanted this cake to have some chocolate in it because that’s my mood lately, so I added some cocoa to the dry ingredients. It wasn’t until the cake was in the oven that I got really excited. The smell while it’s baking is INCREDIBLE. It lingered in our apartment all night long and was super comforting while I slept. When I tried it the next day, it hit me: this cake tastes so much like cookies my grandma used to make called Jumbos, which are molasses/chocolate/spice cookies that are stamped into circles with little rounds punched out of the middles like donuts, and frosted with a simple white glaze. There’s something about the combination of flavors that is hard to put your finger on: it’s super rich from the chocolate and molasses, a little warming from the ginger and other spices, there’s depth from the stout, and just tastes really homey. If my memory serves me right, Grandma made them around the holidays, which makes total sense! I tried my hand at making her recipe last Christmas and it was a total fail. Luckily, I now have a cake version of her cookie that is so easy to put together and stays incredibly moist for days and days.
jumbo cake
yield: 10-12 slices (or more, depending on the size of your slices)
cake
1 cup (240 ml) stout
1 cup (340 g) molasses
½ tsp. baking soda
Do ahead: In a medium saucepan, add the stout and molasses. Heat over medium-low until boiling, then remove from the heat. Add the baking soda and whisk to combine. The mixture will foam up and rise, so be careful! Allow to cool to room temperature. I transferred my mixture to a 2-cup Pyrex measuring glass and put in the fridge to speed this up.
3 eggs
½ cup (105 g) brown sugar
heaping ½ cup (110 g) white sugar
¾ cup (150 ml) neutral oil, like vegetable or canola
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2 cups (250 g) flour
¼ cup (25 g) cocoa powder (I used Dutched)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
2 Tb. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. ground cloves
pinch of ground cardamom
Preheat oven to 350F. Spray Bundt pan well with baking spray and set aside. The deeper the fluting of your pan, the more likely it will stick, so make sure you really spray it well.
Add eggs and sugars to the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whisk on medium-low speed for 3-4 minutes, until mixture is thicker and lighter in color.
Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, sift together all of the dry ingredients to remove lumps and set aside.
Once the eggs have thickened, very slowly pour in the oil with the mixer running, emulsifying the mixture. Once you’ve added all of the oil, turn the mixer to low and add the molasses mixture, then add the dry ingredients in two batches. Once it looks thoroughly mixed, turn the mixer off and finish mixing with a spatula, making sure there are no large lumps. The batter will be very runny. Pour into the sprayed Bundt pan and bake on the middle rack of your oven for 35-45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean with some moist crumbs. I checked at 40 minutes and mine was done, so always check early! I use a dark metal nonstick pan- if you do not, your bake time may vary. Cool in pan for 5-10 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
glaze
1 cup (115 g) powdered sugar
splash of vanilla extract
1-2 Tb. (15-30 ml) milk (I used oat)
pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in a liquid measuring cup and whisk well to combine, starting with 1 Tb. milk and adding only what you need until the glaze is very thick but still slightly pourable. It should very slowly drip off of your whisk. After the cake has cooled, pour the glaze over your cake so that it can drip down the sides. Allow glaze to set before serving. Cake keeps well for several days if stored airtight- dare I say improves with age!
