Gingerbread

Gingerbread is one of my favorite things this time of year. It's one of my assistant curator's birthday's today - Happy Birthday Lynley - so I decided to make gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to take for our lunch celebration.  I checked out a couple of recipes and finally chose one in my good old Fanny Farmer cookbook that gave instructions for baking in a muffin tin.  For the first time ever, Fanny failed me!

It's not that the cupcakes are bad, they just aren't as good as I'd like them to be. For one thing, the spices are too strong and the cake itself is too dense. I'm not even that crazy about the cream cheese frosting. I'll take them in anyway, with apologies. But there you are.

I should have baked my favorite gingerbread recipe, but it calls for 1 cup of maple syrup and I didn't have that much of the real thing left - and I don't keep the fake stuff.  It's my turn to make dessert for the family Monday night dinner, so I've made up my mind to get more maple syrup and bake the following recipe:

Maple Syrup Gingerbread

from

"The Best of Shaker Cooking"

by Amy Bess Miller and Persis Fuller

copyright 1970 by Shaker Community, Inc.

From Hancock Shaker Village



1 cup maple syrup

1 cup sour cream

1 egg, well beaten

2 1/3 cups all purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons melted butter

Combine the maple syrup, sour cream and egg. mix well. Sift all the dry ingredients and stir into the liquid, beating well. Add butter and beat thoroughly. Pour into a well-buttered nine inch square baking pan. Bake in a moderate 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Serve with whipped cream.  If you can find it, sprinkle with shaved bits of maple sugar.

This makes a light flavored cake, not at all dark and spicy like some gingerbreads which usually have molasses in place of the maple syrup. Good enough for company.

"Put your hands to work

and your hearts to God,

and benefits will befall thee."

Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers

or

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing