When you need a little Caribbean in your life:
I adapted Warren Brown’s ‘Gingerly’ pound cake recipe for this (from his book CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch). It’s meant for a 12-cup bundt pan, but it made 32 cupcakes. Here’s the recipe with my adaptations.
Dry Ingredients:
- 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 3 tbsp mini ginger chips
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp ground allspice
Liquid:
- 1 cup sour cream*
- 1 1/2 tbsp molasses
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1/4 tsp lime oil
Creaming:
- 2 sticks unsalted butter at room temp
- 2 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
- 6 large eggs
*I had no sour cream, but I had a cup of buttermilk left over from making red velvet cake, so I combined 7/8 cup buttermilk and 3 tbsp melted butter to substitute.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Whisk the liquids together in a small mixing bowl.
Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs individually, fully incorporating after each. On low speed, add the dry and liquid mixtures alternately in 3-5 additions each, starting and ending with the dry. Do not fully combine after each addition or you may overwork the batter. Brown says this process should only take about 60 seconds.
Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl if necessary (I use a beaterblade, so typically all I have to scrape is whatever is clinging to the wiping blade. I highly, highly recommend one of these! I think it makes baking far more enjoyable). Mix on medium speed for 15-20 seconds to develop the batter’s structure.
If you want to make the bundt cake, Brown recommends baking it for 50-55 minutes. If you want to make cupcakes, 20 minutes should do it, unless you’ve overfilled them. They won’t rise a lot, but I had to put a couple of mine back in for 5 more minutes. The tops will be a little sticky before they cool, but if you press them very gently, they shouldn’t deform or leave anything on your fingertip.
For the frosting, I used a recipe from Food Network and substituted 1 tsp lime oil instead of the vanilla, plus three drops of green food coloring. The recipe made just enough frosting. I’m usually of the opinion that cake, however delicious, is mostly a vehicle for frosting, but you don’t want to overdo it on these because the cake’s flavor is fairly subtle. Enjoy — I did!
