Gingerbread traybake with rich chocolate glaze

Recently, I was craving this cake I remember from my childhood. My grandmother used to make it quite often. I like the combination of soft and fluffy base and the rich chocolate glaze, all brought to a perfection by gingerbread spice.

One of the best effort to result ratio as it is easy to make and it still tastes and looks fancy thanks to the rich chocolate glaze and the spice.

Ingredients

Dough:

• 340 g all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon Dutch process cocoa
• 1/2 pack baking powder (corresponds to 6 g)
• 150 g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 100 ml oil suitable for baking (e.g. sunflower oil)
• 250 ml milk
• 1/2 pack gingerbread powder (special mix of leavening agents and spice); it might be difficult to buy something like that outside of the Czech Republic, you can replace it by increasing amount of the baking powder to 3/4 pack and adding gingerbread spice (I use ready-made gingerbread spice mix which is a mixture of cinnamon, coriander, star anise, allspice, cloves, anise, nutmeg, fennel seeds, all milled; but you can find plenty of recipes for homemade gingerbread spice on the internet)

Chocolate glaze:

• 50 g butter
• 150 ml whipping cream
• 200 g chocolate (I used 85% cocoa)

Directions

Make the dough

Preheat oven to 175ºC (347ºF). Grease and flour a baking tray.

In a bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder and gingerbread powder/spice.

In a separate large bowl, whisk the egg and milk.

Gradually add flour mix into the milk while whisking. Once well combined, add the oil. Whisk until the oil is fully absorbed into the dough.

Pour the dough into the baking tray and place it in the oven.

Bake the cake

Bake for about 35 – 45 mins.  Use a skewer to test if the cake is done.  If you insert it in the centre of the cake, it should come out clean. If not, leave the tray in the oven for a few more minutes.

Glaze the cake

Once the cake cools down, prepare the glaze.

You will need two pots. One slightly larger than the other one. Fill the bigger pot with some water and place the smaller pot inside so that it doesn’t touch the water. Place this “double pot” on the stove and put all the ingredients in the smaller pot. As the water in the bigger pot starts boiling, the ingredients in the smaller pot start melting. Keep stirring until well combined.

Pour the glaze over the cake.

Store in a closed plastic box in the fridge.

Inspired by Apetitonline.