With the holidays rapidly approaching it seems we have less and less free time in our busy days. Work, kids school and homework, football practice, gymnastics, soccer and cheer, throw in 8 loads of laundry, vet appointments, grocery shopping, paying bills…. whew, I’m already tired. All this leaves little time for cooking and much less baking.
Warm and spicy GINGERBREAD was one of my favorite treats as a kid to come home to. I still love the tangy scent of that dark cake rich with molasses hitting my nose as I walked in the house. Top it off with just simple whipped cream or vanilla ice cream and a smidge of fresh ground nutmeg and it is a luxury in our fast paced life.
My mom always had an afternoon snack waiting for us when we got home from school. Sometimes it was cheese, sausage and crackers, or cookies and milk, maybe a mug of hot soup on those cold days when the wind blew you in the door chilled to the bone.
I never liked GINGERBREAD cookies, they were too hard and not sweet enough for me. But mom’s gingerbread cake was an absolute deal breaker. I thought about how lucky we were that our mom would spend all day baking this decadent treat topped off with that creamy whipped cream and a cherry on top just for us. We had to have the only mom in the neighborhood who did this. Of course we weren’t, in those days, mom’s baked all the time.
I called mom to get her recipe for this wonderful childhood memory. I’m not going to lie when I say I was a bit shocked when she started to laugh and said she’d never be able to give it to me because most of the time it came from a red box, THEN, she tells me she sometimes topped it off with Dream Whip if she didn’t have whipping cream or Cool Whip, horrors! Ok, so not so horrible, I actually like Dream Whip and have a box in my pantry right now for those moments I need a topping and am lacking whipping cream or Cool Whip.
So I searched the world wide web for old fashioned GINGERBREAD and found lots of recipes, some had raisins in them, some chocolate chips ( which doesn’t sound all that bad ), but I was craving plain basic GINGERBREAD so I figured I was going to have to tweak the most basic style to my now adult taste buds.
Of course all recipes have the same base ingredients and cooking methods you just have to make it your own. After numerous trials, I found a bit more molasses, a little more cinnamon and using a dark brown sugar was just the ticket.
I love to use freshly grated nutmeg sprinkled on top as it gives off that most enticing perfume with every single bite you take and makes it irresistible to stop at just one piece.
OLD FASHIONED GINGERBREAD
2 3/4 c all purpose flour
