Ah, my sad little gingerbread photos. I had some issues with a tiny step in this recipe that I normally would have just ignored. “Butter the pan.” Pshaw, who butters their pans these days? Nonstick spray, baby!
Since I needed 7⅓ tablespoons of butter for the portion of the recipe that I was making, I figured I would just use the other ⅔ tablespoon to butter the pan. (I used an 8-inch square pan for ⅔ of the recipe.) Then when it came time to remove the cake from the pan, I got stubborn when it stuck. The damn cake would be coming out of the pan!
Um, yeah, that was dumb. It came out, all right, or about half of it did. The other half, the bottom half, was holding on tight to the pan. I quickly shoveled the broken cake pieces back into the pan and they melded together nicely. If I had been able to resist tasting the cake (through a forkful dug out of the middle), no one would have been the wiser.
Fortunately, the taste of the cake made up for the troubles. Dave and I both really like gingerbread, and although I had my doubts about combining it with chocolate, in the end I thought it was a good match. I enjoyed the chunks of chocolate in the cake, even though they all sank to the bottom. The bittersweet chocolate glaze was great too. My cake was a little dry, but it’s entirely possible that I overbaked it by a few minutes. Still, next time I’ll use twelve tablespoons of butter instead of eleven (for a full recipe). And I most certainly won’t use butter to grease the pan.
Heather, who chose this recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, has the recipe posted.
Love your treats AND your photos!! 🙂
Mmmm I don’t think I’ve met a ginger recipe I didn’t like! Better luck next time 🙂
The gingerbread looks great to me!! Love the photos as well!
Don’t worry, they look sad in a puppy-dog adorable way. Glad you liked it.
Mine stuck to the pan too!
Boy, splitting the cake in half – that sounds like something I would do. Actually, I would have called in Jason as soon as it started to break. He’s more patient than I am.
Aw…sorry to hear yours broke! I did use cooking spray for the pan instead of butter, and didn’t have a problem, but I’m pretty sure mine was a nonstick pan. Yours still looks like it was just as tasty though! I love gingerbread. 🙂
This recipe warmed me up to gingerbread… although I think it was the chocolate frosting that did it! If it makes you feel better, my mini bundts didn’t all come out as perfectly as I hoped either (hence, only one bundt cake was featured in my post – lol)
I’d have dug it out in scoops and topped it with vanilla ice cream. Yum!
I’m glad you liked the gingerbread. I think yours looks great. If you didn’t tell us, we wouldn’t have known it stuck to the bottom of the pan.
That’s just too pretty; I totally didn’t notice the bottoms were missing a bit until I read further. Beautiful job!
Yeek! Sorry to hear about the stickies (when it’s simple cakes like these, I always put in the parchment– I only skip it usually when the recipe explicitly tells me not to or if I feel like it might be important not to). Looks incredibly moreish, though: I’m new to the joys of gingerbread but now I can’t get enough!
sounds like a terrible experience. Nonetheless the slices do still look good against the pink backdrop.
Mine stuck. Still good. Yours look yummy!
Ooops. Glad it at least tasted good!