Description

Ina's gingerbread brings old-fashioned flavor to any holiday gathering.

Transcript

Old-Fashioned Gingerbread Old Fashioned Gingerbread just smells like the holidays with it’s mixed of spices and crystallized ginger and raisins. It’s so delicious then I put a dab of rum with cream on top. People go crazy. So for the gingerbread, the first thing I need to do is melt together a quarter pound of butter and some molasses. It’s going to melt it all together. The butter and molasses is melted. It smells so good. I love it when it makes the house smell great. I'm going to put it into the mixer. Well, that cools a little bit. I'm going to get the dry ingredients together. Now I'm not usually that fanatical about amounts, but when I'm baking, everything has to be exact. Okay so, same as before, I always sift the dry ingredients together. That’s two and a third cups of flour, three quarters of a cup of baking soda. Now the spices, one and a half teaspoons of ground ginger, of course, a teaspoon of cinnamon, quarter of a teaspoon of ground cloves. It makes it nice and spicy and a half teaspoon of kosher salt. Then that all get sifted into a bowl and I just mix it with my hands. You know that clean hands are a chef’s best tool thing. At times I can be specific, but you won't thank me if it doesn’t come out right. Hey, I won't thank me if it doesn’t come out right. So the next thing I need is a cup of sour cream. It’s just going to go right into the molasses and butter that I've melted, lots of fresh orange zest. It’s going to give real depth the flavor. Just mix that together. And then in very low speed, just put the dry ingredients in. so all the spices and flour go in. It just smells wonderful. And the best thing about how I can turn up the volume on gingerbread I thought, well, rum soaked raisins. How bad could that be? There were better than I thought. I just poured some dark rum into a pan, added some golden raisins. Put the lid on. Turn on the heat. And when the rum came to a boil, I just turn off the heat and let them soak up all that gorgeous dark rum. Okay, now for the texture in the gingerbread. The raisin that was soaked in rum is just going to go right into the batter. Okay, the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put in crystallized ginger. Just chop it up, a third of cup of crystallized ginger. I always think gingerbread that has no texture is boring. So this is the second thing I'm putting in the raisins and then the ginger to give a wonderful texture. Okay, that should be a better third of a cup. You don’t want to it too finely mixed. You surely want to sort of bite into the crystallized ginger right into the mixture. Let's give it a stir. Put it into an 8-inch square pan that is buttered and floured. I'm going to put it into the oven, 350 degrees for about 35 minutes and bake it until it just brings back to the touch. Then I'm going to cool it and serve it with the most gorgeous rum whipped cream. So that’s a cup of heavy cream, tow and a half tablespoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, add a tablespoon of good dark rum. Okay that’s done. So there it is, spicy chunky gingerbread, my way with a big dollop of rum whipped cream.