Ginger Cake

The book is called “One Pot Cakes” by Andrew Schloss with Ken Bookman, and it makes extravagant claims. You can put together a delicious cake in ten minutes with only a pot, a spoon, and a cake pan. The blurb on the back states “no beating, no sifting, no weeping, no frantic phone calls to Mom, no running out in the middle of the recipe to buy small kitchen appliances, no destroyed kitchen.” It sounded intriguing. And one of the recipes called my name. Buttermilk Ginger Cake was right up my alley. Two kinds of ginger, dried and fresh, buttermilk, and in only ten minutes.

Well, OK, you can do it in ten minutes if you spend thirty minutes getting ready. You have to grate the ginger. You need to have all your ingredients “mise en place.” You need to have a bigger kitchen than Silverstar has, and one where you can put the cookbook where you can see it. And it helps if you do it in the order called for. I put the buttermilk in before the eggs, but I don’t know that it would have helped. The eggs just wanted to sit there in big blobs of white and yolk. It doesn’t say anything about beating the eggs, or even breaking them up before you put them in.

The basic premise of all the recipes is to melt your butter, and then mix your sugars, eggs, spices etc. into that. Then add your baking soda or powder, and last of all, your flour. All without sifting or beating. My advice. Don’t try this at home. I mixed and mixed, and still the flour was lumpy. I thought maybe this was like a cornbread, where you want it to be a little lumpy. Somehow, with cornbread, the lumps disappear. Not here.

If you look at the picture you will see white splotches in the cake. That’s lumpy flour, folks. Not the result I care for. Part of the theory of cake baking is to beat your eggs to put air into them, and that helps your cake rise. By just plopping the eggs in here, you give your cake short shrift.

However, the cake does taste good. But if I was to do it again, I would use a mixer, cream my fat and sugar, and when I added the flour, beat the heck out of it. There may be a reason this book was marked $ .25 at a yard sale.

Buttermilk Ginger Cake

This ginger cake is lighter and more delicate than the Black Pepper Gingerbread. Its flavor ^VI

comes from two different forms of ginger-dried and fresh-for three different effects. The dried ginger is for heat, the fresh for aroma, the combination for a burst of flavor that grows that grows with every bite.

12 tablespoons (1¹/2 sticks) unsalted butter

1¹/4 cups (packed) dark brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1½ teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons grated fresh gingerroot

1¹/2 teaspoons baking soda

1¹/2 cups buttermilk

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup whole-wheat flour or 1 more cup all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

In a large heavy saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter, stirring occasionally. remove from the heat.

Stir in the brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, salt, eggs, ground ginger, and fresh ginger. Add the baking soda in pinches, breaking up any lumps with your fingers. Stir in thoroughly. Stir in the buttermilk. Stir in the flour, just until well blended.

Pour and scrape the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 5 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack or 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool on the rack for about 15 minutes more.