Baking with Dorie: Chocolate-Gingerbread Cake for Christmas

Since it 's minutes before Christmas, my Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats is for a holiday classic:  gingerbread.  My version is made as a tall square cake that can be cut in cubes and it's got melted chocolate as well as chopped chocolate and fresh ginger inside it, and there's a delicious chocolate glaze on top of it.  Not really classic, but really, really good. 

It's also easy to make and - ta-da:  freezable.  If you wanted to, you could make the cake now, ice it and freeze it until you're ready for it.  You'd have one less thing to do when the going gets going on Monday and Tuesday.

This recipe comes from Baking From My Home to Yours.  And the beautiful photograph (don't you want to be wherever that cake is?) was taken by Alan Richardson.

Comments

[Dorie]

I'm so late responding to everyone's great comments that Christmas is over, the new year has started and you're probably already thinking of baking for Valentine's Day. Aaarrrgh and apologies.

I'm so glad that so many of you baked this recipe. I made the gingerbread for a dinner party and had a little hunk leftover, which I kept pecking at and pecking at and when it was gone (which was quickly), I was sad to see it go.

Maria, Sara and Ride&Cook, it's great that you made the cake and liked it. It always makes me immensely happy to know that my recipes are "traveling".

Jane M, welcome! I hope you'll visit often and continue to bake and bake and bake!

Bobbi, there's nothing I'd like more than to hear about your baking. Please - keep all of us posted.

Anna C S, I bet a creamy white frosting would be good with this gingerbread - it would be fun to have another frosting to play around with on this cake. I think it's so great that you're young and interested in baking - it sounds like you have a very sweet future ahead of you.

[Anna C S]

Dorie, (well, everyone) I am an amateur chef under the age of 21 years. I have only one of your books, Baking, which I received for Christmas. About a week before Christmas, I was experimenting with a gingerbread cake. I ended up with a creamy white ginger icing, not such a rich chocolate one, and I had wanted crunch, so I added some walnuts (not chopped ginger - I didn't think of that). But when I got Baking, the gingerbread cake in the book was unbelievably similar to my recipe. I'm not very organized and I'll have to look around a bit before I find the tentative recipe that I jotted down, but I will share it when I find it.

WARNING: It's nowhere near as delicious as the chocolate gingerbread cake.

[Bobbi]

I just made your Basic Biscuits, with buttermilk, from Baking. I'd run out to buy the book after eying it for a year and finally getting a gift certificate that cinched my decision to purchase it. The biscuits were devoured by my family while standing at the kitchen counter. This first attempt at one of your recipes will be the beginning of a Year of Baking and Learning with Dorie. I love your blog and if I may, I would like to keep you posted about my pilgrimage.

[Jane M]

I just found your blog and I'm HOOKED! I'm also enjoying your BAKING book which I finally splurged on the other day! Already baked up 3 recipes which are ALL keepers. You are very inspiring to me.

[ride&cook]

Dorie, I made this cake yesterday for Christmas dinner, it is delicious! I'll be making it again for a staff dinner a friend and I are doing on 6 January. I love your book; it is inspiring me to get back into baking, which I haven't done for so many years. I hope your Christmas was full of peace and love, and I wish you all the best in the new year.

[Sara]

I just made this for Christmas Eve dessert and as a treat to leave for Santa!
It was delicious and I love,love,love your cookbook. Joyeux Noël!

[Maria]

Your cake is perfect for Christmas! I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year! Thanks for everything!! You are the greatest! I love reading your blog and books, you truly are an inspiration!