Sunday, February 21, 2010

The DAR eats Spicy Gingerbread

This week at the club there was a meeting of the DAR. For those of you lucky enough not to know who these people are, they are the Daughters of the American Revolution. I believe these are women who can trace their ancestry to the brave men who fought the War for Independence. (Support Our Troops!) One thing I know for sure - they are old.



An Actual Picture from our DAR Luncheon - the joy is palpable.


They decided to go with an authentic 1700's menu: Chicken pot pie with wild rice. Wild rice??? I don't know about you, but when I think of RICE I think of CHINA, not Bunker Hill. But, as you can tell from the photo, these are not ladies to be argued with. The dessert they selected? Warm gingerbread with whipped cream.

Hot damn. Love me some gingerbread. And not this kind:


But this kind:


This gingerbread cannot run as fast as he can AND you can catch him.

My gingerbread is spicy - a concept my DAR ladies are undoubtedly not familiar with. But they devoured it, asked for more, brought me out to thunderous applause and tipped me $1000. Part of this is not exactly true and I'll leave you to figure out which part.

I add cayenne pepper to my gingerbread for an extra dose of zippedy-doo-dah. It is like an ideal man - tender, sensitive and simple. I always serve it with sweetened whipped cream but if you want to get all snotty on me, creme anglais is a lovely foil as well. The smell wafting from your kitchen is worth every second spent on baking this.

SPICY GINGERBREAD

1 stick (4 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp. ground ginger
1 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cocoa powder
pinch of ground cloves
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup milk
2/3 c molasses
1/2 c dark brown sugar
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour one 9-inch round or square cake pan.

Sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cocoa, cloves, cayenne, salt and baking soda.

Either in a medium saucepan or the microwave heat the milk and molasses together until the molasses melts. Remove from heat.

In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add brown sugar and beat until smooth and light. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

With the machine on low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk/molasses mixture. Put batter into prepared cake pan and bake for about 40 minutes. Let the gingerbread cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes and turn out onto a rack.

This is easier to cut if you let it cool completely and warm up each slice as you serve. If you can't wait that long, just hack into the thing, add whipped cream, eat and die of happiness.

And don't forget to thank our valiant boys in (whatever color they wore - just not red) for YOUR freedom. And since there aren't many (any) of them left, find a member of the DAR and thank her. I warn you - she won't speak back to you.

HAPPY BAKING!




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw on fb that you said to come read this, so I did. I always follow directions:)

I do love some gingerbread. I like it with lemon curd, personally, but I can imagine that a lovely pouf of whipped cream is nice as well.

They did used to grow rice in the low country in SC back in the day. And indigo. I am a Wealth of Information. But still, I'm not a fan of the DAR. How come you get to be in a dumb club just because your ancestors did A Thing long long ago?

Siouxsie_Sue said...

I would give just about anything to try a slice of that gingerbread! Maybe I'll try to make it to take with me to Baltimore next weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Linda said...

I know they used to grow rice here, but I just don't think of it as truly authentic American. It's hard to imagine Thomas Jefferson scarfing down a big bowl of rice. With some Kung Pao Chicken on top. Susan, you should totally make this to take to Baltimore! You will be very popular with the Baltimoreans!

Music Mom said...

My grandfather was a faithful (maybe the word is rabid) member of the SAR - Sons of the American Revolution - his whole life. Once they had a convention in Kansas City and my grandpa was on the entertainment committee and he arranged to have Harry Truman come and speak. The proudest moment of his life was having his picture taken with his hand on Harry Truman's shoulder. I still have the picture.
My grandpa was most distressed, however, that none of his daughters or grandaughters would join the DAR. Our great-great-great whatever did carry the flag in the Battle of Saratoga, after all! But somehow it never inspired me to hang with the ladies pictured above. One must remember that it was the DAR who forbid Marian Anderson from singing at their convention, thus forcing her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with MLK. Kind of tarnished their image for me...
However, if I had known that their would be OnLinePastryChef gingerbread involved, I might have reconsidered.

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