This classic Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting is the perfect holiday dessert. It will remind you the time-honored gingerbread cake that grandma made. This delectable cake is bursting with flavor from molasses, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. Elegant enough for your holiday meal yet simple enough for your office potluck.
Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Are the holidays keeping you super busy? It seems like right after Halloween things really begin to ramp up. It really feels like run Rudolph run from then until after the New Year. Are you invited to several holiday parties or have you been asked to bring something for a potluck? This scrumptious Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting is quick to come together, delicious and pretty with its silky cream cheese frosting. In a hurry? Bake the cake one day and frost it the following day.
What is molasses?
Molasses is the dark, sweet syrupy by product from refining sugar beets or sugar cane into sugar. It is a different type of sweetener that is often used to produce a certain type of flavor. Just as honey produces a different taste than sugar so does molasses. It is next to impossible to describe the taste of molasses but you will know it when you smell and love it when you mix it in this cake batter.
What type of molasses should I use?
Unsulphured versus Sulphured
Unsulphured molasses has the best flavor and is the best for baking. It is made from sun ripened cane that has been allowed to ripen naturally. It has a naturally sweet flavor and is the preferred choice for baking
Sulphured molasses is made from immature green cane that has not been allowed to fully ripen. That cane is then treated with sulfur fumes during the sugar extracting process. This molasses is less sweet and you may put off a slight chemical taste.
Light, Dark or Blackstrap Molasses?
Light molasses is made from the first boiling of the sugar beets or sugar cane. It is the type of molasses most commonly sold in grocery stores and used for baking. It is the most sweet of the three and helps make your gingerbread cookies and cakes softer.
Dark molasses is made from the second boiling of the sugar beets or sugar cane. Stronger in flavor, thicker, darker and less sweet it is sometimes referred to as robust molasses. It is more difficult to find and is perfect in something with more pep like gingersnaps.
Blackstrap molasses is made from the third boiling of the sugar beets or sugar cane. It is the least sweet molasses with a somewhat bitter taste. Much darker in color and thickest it should only be used in recipes calling for it and should not be substituted for light or dark molasses. It is better in savory dishes like glazed ham, barbecue sauce and baked beans.
To sum it all up use unsulphured light molasses for this Gingerbread Cake which fortunately is the most common type found on your grocery store shelf.
How do you make Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting?
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