This recipe came together perfectly (apart from when I dropped my ground ginger bottle in the flour mix, poofing it out everywhere...oooops) and filled my house with a beautiful Christmassy scent that I just can't get enough of. I subbed the molasses for black treacle, which I'm lead to believe is the same thing and rather than baking the gingerbread in a square pan, I opted to make it into lil cupcakes and smear them with vanilla butter cream. I would have much preferred to pipe a big swirl atop each cupcake but they came out so huge the swirl just looked all wrong, so I attacked it with my pallet knife. So much cuter and much easier to transport and distribute at work :) I will most definitely be making these again, absolutely delightful little mouthfuls of gingery (although not gingery enough for my tastes) goodness. Don't forget to check out the other SMS bakers for their wonderful attempts :)
Recipe:
2/3 cup of Guinness Stout
2 cups of plain flour
2 tbs of cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup of caster sugar
1/3 cup of firmly packed dark brown sugar
2/3 cup of molasses (I used black treacle)
3/4 cup of vegetable oil
Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and lightly butter and flour a 9x9x2 inch square pan.
In a medium saucepan, bring the beer to a simmer and remove from heat.
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, ginger, white pepper and cinnamon into a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, brown sugar and molasses until smooth. Whisk in the oil to combine (I've just realised I forgot to add the oil, but the recipe didn't seem to suffer) Whisk in the dry ingredients in three batches alternating with the beer. (Dry, beer, dry, beer, dry.) Mix until just combined, do not over mix.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
