Last week I shared my mini doughnut pop recipe for the kids to enjoy baking and decorating for Halloween.
This week I’m going to show you a recipe that is more befitting for an adults Halloween treat!
Now as with most adult treats this one does contain alcohol though it is just for flavour and is perfectly suitable for the kids too since most of the alcohol will be long gone!
To the untrained eye, this cake might just look like a regular brownie of some kind but there isn’t an ounce of chocolate in it.
Instead, the darkness of this bake is made with luscious dark treacle and a bottle of Guinness which is backed up by the spicy kick of ginger!
To ensure the flavour of ginger really comes
through, a mix of fresh and dried powdered ginger is used along with a little cinnamon and black pepper for some balance.
Since the colour of this cake is a fantasticly dark hue you could cut out shapes of bats, spiders and other creepy critters you might not want to bump into at night for that extra Halloween spirit.
You could also serve it along with some custard coloured to look like green goo for a delicious but gruesome looking dessert!
This cake is so moist and tasty it shouldn’t be limited to Halloween though.
It would be really nice at Christmas too, a nice change to sticky toffee pudding and the like!
America’s Test Kitchen Classic Gingerbread Cake
Makes a 8″ square cake
Ingredients
3/4 cup of Guinness of similar stout
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup black treacle
5 1/4 ounces Muscovado sugar
1 3/4 ounces granulated sugar
7 1/2 ounces plain flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger (use half if very sensitive to spice)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
2 large eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
Method
Grease and flour an 8 inch square baking tin.
Preheat the oven to 180oc/160oc fan.
Place the stout in a medium size saucepan on a medium heat and stir until it comes to the boil.
Remove from the heat and add in the baking soda, the mixture will froth up.
When the froth subsides stir in the treacle, brown sugar and granulated sugar until they are all dissolved, place back on the heat on very low if needed then set aside in a large bowl to cool.
In another large bowl, whisk the flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, black pepper and baking powder together until combined.
Into the cooled stout, treacle and sugar mixture whisk in the eggs, vegetable oil and fresh ginger until combined.
Very slowly whisk the wet mixture into the dry mixture until all the wet mixture is mixed in and the cake batter is smooth.
Transfer the batter to the baking pan and tap it on to the work surface to make the mix more even.
Bake on a rack in the middle of the oven until a toothpick comes out clean of any uncooked batter, about 35-45 minutes.
Cool the cake in the pan on a cooling tray for a couple of hours then turn out carefully, cut squares and serve!