Gingerbread cake

[Once, before the New Year, I was so immersed in the gingerbread tastes and aromas that the gift gingerbreads that I baked were not enough for me. At our festive table, gingerbread is usually not eaten, but they are received as gifts before leaving. Spreading such gingerbread]

Gingerbread cake

Category: Confectionery

Ingredients
DOUGH:
Flour psh.	300 g
Honey	300 g
Egg	5 pieces
Oil sl.	100 g
Baking powder	10 g
Rum	1 tbsp. l.
SPICES: (
Cinnamon	1 tsp
Carnation	1/2 tsp
Allspice	1/3 tsp
DRIED FRUIT: (total 300 gr)
Prunes	70 g
Dried peach	40 g
Dried pear	40 g
Dried apple (soft discs)	40 g
Candied ginger (petals)	50 g
Candied lemon	60 g
CREAM:
Cream 33-35%	300 ml
Orange liqueur or rum	2-3 st. l.
INTERLAYER:
Orange jam (Schwartau)	150-200 gr

Cooking method

• Once, before the New Year, I was so immersed in the gingerbread tastes and aromas that the gift gingerbreads that I baked were not enough for me. At our festive table, gingerbread is usually not eaten, but they are received as gifts before leaving. Spreading such gingerbread
• And I really wanted to see what impression a real, homemade gingerbread would make on our friends - at the very moment when their taste buds react
• But since for dessert, in addition to the indispensable cranberry mousse, everyone is expecting something new from me - but in the form of a cake…. I had to turn the gingerbread into a cake! We all liked it so much that for several years now, on one of the winter holidays - New Year, Christmas, or my husband's and my birthday parties, I bake it - such an extraordinary, never boring cake ...
• And of course, you can omit the impregnation and decoration with cream, replace it with jam and enjoy just the gingerbread, which it actually is, if you discard all my creamy fantasies ...
• After all, there are different gingerbread cookies, so I managed to turn such soft into an incredibly fragrant New Year cake
• Rectangular shape: 33x23x5 cm
• 1. Cut dried fruits into small cubes (0.5 cm), except for prunes - it is cut into three parts for each berry.
• To prevent the cubes from sticking together, I sprinkle flour (from the recipe) on the board and cut it right in the flour.
• It is more convenient to cut the ginger petals with scissors finely and finely and also roll in flour.
• With the exception of ginger, all ingredients are soft, as required. In a soft dough, even slightly denser pieces are not very good. nice to feel
• Do not replace candied lemon with orange. Better zest of 2 lemons.
• 2. Beat honey and soft butter together until whitening and fluffy.
• Mix flour with baking powder, spices and dried fruits.
• Turn on the oven for heating up to 170-175 C.
• Beat the eggs separately (the splendor of the dough depends on how well they are beaten - no less than from the baking powder).
• Gently mix the egg mass with honey and rum. Add flour mixture, mix gently.
• 
• Here is a photo of the wrong dough, the eggs are underbeaten and only the baking powder is working (: there should be no nosiness, large cavities mean that the dough is denser in the "neighboring" places
• After baking, the dough should be evenly fine-pored.
• 3. Pour the dough into a greased pan (even better - a silicone baking mat). Although the dough pours out, it does not spread in shape - here you need to help him, distribute with a spatula carefully and quickly in an even layer. Bake for 25-30 minutes. to a dry skewer. The main thing here is not to overexpose, otherwise the cake will come out drier than necessary for the cake.
• When baked, it will look like a fluffy but dense sponge cake. Or a very soft gingerbread
• 4. Cool the cake, trim the edges, cutting off the crusts (to get soaked faster) and cut in half (not horizontally, but vertically, otherwise the dried fruits will fall out and the cake will turn out too small ... That is, there was a cake 4 cm high, but put two halves each for a friend and the cake will be 8 cm high).
• 5.While the cake is cooling, whip the cream until steep peaks, add orange liqueur (Grand Marnier, Cointreau) or rum at the end. Do not add sugar under any circumstances !!! I tried to slightly sweeten it ... Honey dough itself is quite sweet, the cream just softens this saturation. After all, cream itself has a certain sweetness ...
• 6. When the cakes are completely cool, generously spread one of them with orange jam, place the other on it and cover the top and sides with whipped cream. Put the cake in the refrigerator for 6 hours or overnight.
• Once again cover the cake with a thick layer of cream - after all, the cream is 33%, low-fat, in the sense - not rustic and a thick layer will not "weigh down" the taste.
• For greater "durability" of the whipped cream, I tried to add mascarpone when whipping ... The cream became denser, more stable, did not settle, but ... My husband and I found it too heavy for this already very rich gingerbread biscuit
• There are no eggs in the cream, so it can be stored not for 2-3 days, but for a week.
• An interlayer of contrasting jam (fragrant and slightly bitter) is one of the subtle components that provide the guest "Wah!" Therefore, do not replace with anything sweet, please! Alcohol in the cream also adds its own flavor.
• As a result, the cake will be small - 17x22x8 cm, but high, weighing approx. 1.5 kg. Enough for a sample and for one tea party for 5-6 people.

Note

I usually made the interlayer only from orange jam, but this time I had to do a lot of unnecessary body movements: I overexposed the cake and, for greater juiciness, added 3 tbsp. l. whipped cream (however, it turned out very nicely both airy and with orange bitterness)
But there is one thing: cream + jam = more liquid than necessary, and the layer is squeezed out under the weight of the upper cake layer.I had to pierce both cake layers with wooden skewers obliquely, fixing the extra body movements at the required height ...
In Crossroads (and not only) I have been buying wonderful orange jam for 10 years


By the composition of dried fruits and spices: during the experiments, this particular set was selected. How will the replacement affect ... - here I can no longer vouch for the taste ... In the photo you can see blotches of red candied fruits, it happened to me a force majeure - I was sure that there were still some jerky apple mugs in stock, it turned out - I was mistaken ... I decided to replace the Uzbek one with the Uzbek dogwood (in any case, that's what they called me these dried berries; although the taste seemed completely unfamiliar to me and did not look like dogwood). It would be better if I replaced the apples with a larger amount of peach and pear ... So for the first time I would ask you to stick to the recipe so that you like this gingerbread cake just as we and our guests have liked it for several years now ...
Decorated quite simply, home-style ... with almond petals, and finally tried a silicone mat for mastic and chocolate in my work - I cast several patterns from orange chocolate for testing ...

Ir, I can imagine how delicious it is! More precisely, I can't imagine Thank you for another masterpiece

delicious!

[Irisha]

Irisha, you know how to surprise! I can imagine how delicious it is! Take note!

[Ira,]

Ira, I am grateful for the next gingerbread, I already have neither one and a half portions of Katarzhinka, nor two trays with a mountain of gingerbread, nor 5 houses - there is nothing, I will still have to try the gingerbread cake, it looks very tempting, festive like New Year's

a real Christmas handsome!

[Irisha]

The New Year's fairy tale continues!
Irisha, you are just a magician - such a New Year's cake! And the process of creation is a description of cooking, so interesting and detailed that you immediately want to start baking.
Thank you, Irish!

Oh well, beauty, I take it as a bookmark. I will definitely try

Ira, how I looked at your recipe in time. GREAT! How many times do I make gingerbread and all the time they turn out hard for me. And so I want soft gingerbread .... I will definitely take your recipe into service. Thank you very much for such a detailed recipe, practically a master class.

This is a whole surprise for the guests.They all sat down to eat a cake that looked quite biscuit; cutting the cake gives them their first doubts; and now, having tasted, the guests are already beginning to admire in amazement, and many quite reasonably say that they have never eaten this

Miracles of Christmas, and more!
Merry Christmas to you, Irochka!

A person who grew up on homemade gingerbread, he must continue and improve the traditions started by his mother.We still have to learn Thank God, now you can learn a lot through the Internet

[Irina]

And we have already tasted this cake. There were no indifferent people, all the guests liked it very, very much. I took the recipe into a permanent recipe box.
Irina, thanks for sharing such wonderful recipes with us

Good afternoon, I baked your gingerbread last night. Tried it today, very tasty. Only cream I have condensed milk with butter (my child's favorite cream I try to please him and candied peels of citrus fruits, homemade). Soft, aromatic, pleasant to the taste, rose well, made it into a square shape, the view is very beautiful.

Thank you so much for such a delicious gingerbread cake recipe.
Health, success to you and your loved ones in the NEW year! Thanks again

[+ Gala +]

+ Gala +
Galinka, thanks for the photo report! Wonderful cake! And that I liked it - I am very glad!
agata116, Thank you for your kind words!

We also tried this recipe of yours, Irina. Thank you. The family unambiguously voted for the gingerbread cake against the katazhinka. My husband asks for a take two for the weekend, but said that it would be tastier without the cream.
I did not find the indicated dried fruits, therefore I used the usually available mixture a la pineapple and so on. Layered with homemade orange filling, recipe from here with HB.

[shoko11]

shoko11 , Thank you!
I'm glad that you liked this gingerbread, and with the katazhinka, it's about developing skills, and you yourself wrote that you will still hone it ... the gingerbreads are all so different, I wouldn't give up any of them, and my family too

Here is a photo of our gingerbread

I planned to first apply a New Year's drawing with chocolate on a stencil, but even after the freezer, the cream stuck on the back, and my idea failed. Therefore, I just had to fill in a couple of leaves and put them on top. And just gingerbread cookies with a stencil pattern were sold for gifts, I didn't have time to take a photo, it looked very impressive.

Irina, thanks for the new version of the gingerbread, now in the form of a cake! I will definitely cook it. If possible, I have a few questions.
Is it right to beat the yolks and whites separately? What layer of dough should be when we pour it into the mold? Don't use sour cream precisely because it contains sugar? And, probably, the last question - apricot jam, also with bitterness - in your opinion, will it not work instead of orange?
Thank you

[shoko11]

shoko11 what a cake! Beautyaaa ...
And thanks for the detailed description of the process!
I just started tasting our gingerbread yesterday ... from 1 January. somehow got seriously ill and for more than a week lived IN GENERAL, without taste-smell ... not an ordinary decrease-dullness as with colds (there is no reason to decrease the sense of smell - I have three-bronchitis, and my throat and higher - without inflammation ...) It turned out to be so scary ... to live, not feeling ANY odors ... And I suffered that from childhood too sensitive sense of smell is better to smell excess than vice versa ...
So the second day I enjoy gingerbread flavors
And again-and-again I will repeat that the richest in taste and aromatic sensations are Katazhinki, no matter how many and whatever gingerbread I try ...

Irina, please tell me, can you use "wet meringue" cream instead of cream on top for coating (these are whipped proteins are brewed with sugar syrup)

[Busyavka]

While Irina is gone, let me answer:
BusyavkaYou can use some other cream, but it will be a slightly different gingerbread cake
If you liked the recipe, and you want to get exactly the gingerbread cake that the author shared with us, then you need to follow the recipe exactly. Irina has everything tested and wonderfully matched over the years. Believe me, I have done it more than once.

[Gala]

Gala, once again, quietly rejoicing, as you understand all the subtleties in recipes, thanks!

Busyavka,
Tanya, believe me, the sugar in the cream will be superfluous, but I can’t say anything about the unsweetened protein cream - I haven’t used proteins without heat treatment for a long time. It's funny, maybe, but I'm afraid
Gala is right, the final version in the recipe is the result of many experiments - I tried it with different creams, served even just pieces of this gingerbread "biscuit" with ice cream well, sweet ... and the excessive sweetness overlaps the subtle shades of spices
I do not dissuade you from experimenting, I myself love them, but after trying the original - so that there is something to compare with and from what to build on

Thank you, I'm already going to bake, while, however, I will be without cream (there is no cream), but I want to please myself and my husband For the result I am sure in advance, since all my preparations are from your website

[Nagira]

Nagira, came to say big-big-big THANKS !!!
The gingerbread turned out to be not quite a cake (all my efforts, sorry), rather a really big, soft, juicy New Year's Gingerbread, since it was just a rehearsal before the winter holidays. I just missed the cream-orange jam between the layers so that it would pick up juiciness, and poured it with fondant-icing on top and tried to paint the scribbles with caramel pencils.



I baked it in the evening, and on the trail at lunchtime. day girls at work in ecstasy rolled their eyes, really, really taste, aroma, as you say, opened up to all 200
I will definitely bake for the new year! The composition is so verified that the first time it turned out amazing! I put on round two-layer gingerbread cookies and paint (I liked to decorate, I need to practice). I bought some Chinese molds with a detachable diameter of 10 centimeters, gingerbreads of the same size, I think.
I have been looking for a recipe for a (simple) SOFT gingerbread! Thanks for your option!

[Lavender]

Lavender, this is a gingerbread!
I will bake too charmingly tomorrow, so your photo tempts ...
The color of the dough is so attractive, your honey must have been dark?
And the gingerbread is really done once or twice (if all the dried fruits are prepared and chopped in advance) and the taste-aroma appears quickly
Thank you for trusting the recipe and for a wonderful photo!
Please show your round ones when you bake

Uuuuh))) And I want this! There is a whole kg of gingerbread dough in the refrigerator !!! I'm chatting for hours ...

[rodnik]

rodnik,
Olya, you will have to knead new dough, but this gingerbread is worth it!
What you have in the fridge will not work, it is too dense.
Yes, and I can only vouch for the taste of the composition that is in the recipe, I have tried more than once
Here the dough turns out like thick sour cream:

3. Pour out the dough into a greased form (even better - a silicone baking mat). Although the dough pours out, it does not spread in shape

Thank you for your delight and good luck!

[Irina]

Irina, yeah, I re-read the composition again))) I will definitely cook it on a long weekend))) And the gingerbread dough was gone). I come home from work yesterday, the whole table is covered with painted gingerbread and my daughter and grandmother are in the process)))))

[Irisha]

Irisha, take the report. This year, after soaking with whipped cream, I covered the gingerbread with lemon glaze.



I also made an option with the addition of my favorite rye flour. I took 150 g of flour (total) = 90g (wheat) + 60g (rye). Unlike purely wheat, such a gingerbread cake, we got such a gingerbread, that is, the dough in the end turned out to be denser and more gingerbread, it seems to me. Although the proportions of flour must still be selected. Despite my love for rye flour, and, it seems, not very strong differences in taste, your version of the gingerbread is still better.

Checkmark, how glad I am that you love it too! and pushed to experiments I love this gingerbread no less than Katarzhinka! for being fast, without ripening even 3 days
Thank you - the photos are so nice! is that why I always want it as soon as I see it?
And for rye - did you do half the norm? he .... in the photo is not as enticing as the one in the first two ... it is clear that he is plump ... well, but the Experiment!
Probably, rye is not suitable for such a soft, semi-biscuit dough ...
And I didn’t have an experiment with small detachable (10cm) forms: no matter how hard I tried to lay out the dough with a depression in the middle, so that the top didn’t rise like a cupcake - a smooth, even top didn’t work

Yes, I did half the norm for the experiment.

in the photo is not so enticing

The photo is not a very good side, as if there are not many candied fruits in it, but this is not so, but there was not enough jam for spreading. It is still tasty, and the older (in the sense of the longer it costs), the tastier.
Katazhinka is under pressure for the second day, as I try to unsubscribe in the topic.

It's still delicious, and the older (in the sense, the longer it costs), the tastier.

Well that's the most important thing, Gal
And what about the glaze - not very good. sweet?

No, Irish, lemon frosting is just right. The cream is not sweet, and I am not stingy with Admin.

Yasnenko, Gal, or else right in front of NG, 31, I made a quick present from this dough and also without cream, with glaze, but I didn't try it myself this time. Yes, and it is interesting to know the opinion from the outside, otherwise everyone has different tastes ...

Irina, congratulations on the holidays again! Yesterday I wanted a beautiful, tasty table and did not want to cook, but the new cafes let us down. So in the evening I had to put on an apron and go. The gingerbread cake has become a lifesaver. It was not without variations))), there was no time to cook the orange layer, and I didn't want currant, just finished with the old Polish stuff with such a filling. But jam, of course, is simply a must for impregnation and harmonious taste.
As a cream I used not cream (in principle, I don’t really like pure cream), but cream cheese + cream + a couple of tablespoons of powder. The cream tastes great and keeps its shape well.

The gingerbread was baked in a rectangular metal frame, the cakes turned out to be very even, without bumps and domes. Now I very often bake in it: both gingerbread dough and biscuits.