TWD- Chocolate Gingerbread for Baby and Me

This week, Heather, of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread on page 212 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.

I LOVED this recipe. Some TWD colleagues felt the ginger was too strong, but mine was perfect. (Not perfect looking, but the amount of ginger seemed just right.) I did omit the optional stem ginger in syrup though. Jennifer and I had decided that we will do our best to include the optional ingredients. Unless it is a real hardship, we will try to adhere to the spirit of each recipe and go all out. We do have a well-stocked Asian store in Peoria. We were going to pop in after spin torture and grab the stem ginger. After spin torture, we went to Cub Foods with Rotund Reader. All three of us needed to go to the service desk to get money back for errors. Then we headed to the new Indian restaurant, where, in addition to other oddities, there was no restroom. In spite of Rotund Reader and I desperately needing a restroom, we decided to go to CVS before the Asian store, where they also did not have a restroom. Rotund Reader warned me, "You will need to drag Jennifer out of the make-up section". I threatened to pee in her car and we made haste to the Asian store, went to turn into the alley to park, but a car came barreling out from the wrong direction and stopped in front of us. Forever. Or at least long enough for another car (also heading the WRONG way down the alley) to take the one parking place. We would have had to park a mile away and the temperature was about 15 degrees. We decided that this qualified as a hardship and decided to forgo the optional stem ginger in syrup.

No worries though. Apparently the powdered ginger and the fresh sugared ginger was just right for my tastes.



Odd conversation with husband:
-"Honey, do you know if we have any cloves?"
-(He finds a jar way in the back of a never used cupboard) "Umm, we have these", holding up a jar his mom gave to me to use to make Christmas ornaments fifteen years ago.
-"Well, they smell fine and I just need a couple; I think they will be fine"
-"You just put two whole cloves in your gingerbread?"
-"No, I need to grind them up."
-"How are you going to do that?"
-"Umm, probably with a mortar and pestle"
He starts laughing hysterically, "yeah right", continues laughing.
-"Well, it would be silly to get out the electric spice grinder for a couple cloves."
Still laughing,"ha ha, ha ha, you want to make this recipe TODAY? OK, see you in a couple of hours, you will never be able to grind up those cloves!"
- 5 Seconds later, while he is still laughing-


Apparently my husband believes cloves have the hardness of diamonds.

My cake did break coming out of the pan.


I decided to snack on some then and take the neater parts and frost them. I gave some to my niece for her birthday.



And made some of the ginger infused whipped cream for us to have the next day.



My favorite recipe so far!