Hoegaarden Gingerbread Cake

The nice thing about my roommate, and hopefully all roommates, is that she always has positive things to say about my cooking.  I’ve made the house smell like the nuclear apocalypse, with a week-long fallout wreak of oil and spices, and she still rubs her belly and tells me how good everything is.  This is a little disconcerting, because I’m positive that one day I’ll poison her and she’ll still be smiling as she lapses into a coma.  But for now, it’s useful–I can experiment with food for any occassion.

Last year I made this gingerbread cake from Smitten Kitchen for Ari’s birthday, and this time I changed the recipe because I have no fear and because I know she’d still love a flop. Here are the notable exceptions:

• Hoegaarden Witbier (left over from the Mussels) instead of Guiness
• 1/2 of the original recipe
• Applesauce instead of oil
• Blackstrap molasses + Honey to replace regular Molasses

I think it turned out really well–the applesauce upped the moistness, and the Hoegaarden complemented the deep flavor of the ginger and molasses.  Ari liked it too.  She’s still alive, at any rate.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Hoegaarden Witbier
• 3/8 cup blackstrap molasses
• 1/8 cup honey (to measure this, just eyeball the molasses and the honey into a 1/4 cup)
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• Pinch of ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 large eggs (to measure this, beat one of the eggs and then eyeball 1/2 of it into the mixture along with one whole egg.  Make a 1/2 egg omelet with the other egg)
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/8 cup sweetened applesauce
• Confectioners sugar for dusting

Heat the oven to 350F.  Boil the molasses/honey and beer over medium-high heat until it boils, then let it cool to room temperature.  Add the baking soda to this mixture.  Whisk together the egg, sugars, and applesauce in a large bowl, and mix all of the dry ingredients in a separate smaller bowl.  Whisk the beer mixture into the sugar mixture, then add the dry ingredients on top and mix just well enough to make the dry bits disappear.  Lubricate an 8″ baking pan and pour the batter into it.  Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 30 minutes–the cake is done when a knife inserted into the middle comes out without wet batter.  Cool for ten minutes before turning over onto a plate–this will help avoid sogginess from the cake’s own heat getting trapped in the pan.  Dust with confectioner’s sugar as decoration.  The cake tastes better on Day 2.

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