Gramercy Tavern Ginger Bread Cake with Rum Butter Sauce

We’ve been making this for desert on Christmas day for over a decade. It’s very good and keeps well in the fridge for leftovers for several days. It can be finicky, and I’ve left some pointers as footnotes from lessons learned.

The Ginger Bread Cake

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup stout (Guinness stout or oatmeal stout)
  • 1 cup dark molasses (fancy molasses works too)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 tablespoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (recipe calls for freshly grated, but ground works too)
  • pinch of cardamom
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup of vegetable oil

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter bundt pan and dust with flour, knocking out excess.1
  2. Bring stout and molasses to a boil2 in a saucepan and remove from heat. Whisk in baking soda, then set aside to cool.
  3. The dries will go into Bowl 1: In a medium sized bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, and spices.
  4. In wets will go into Bowl 2: In a large bowl whisk the eggs and sugars together.
  5. Whisk the oil into Bowl 2.
  6. Whisk the cooled molasses mixture into Bowl 2.
  7. Add the Bowl 1 mixture to Bowl 2 and mix until everything is just evenly mixed. Don’t overmix.3
  8. Pour into bundt pan and rap to remove air bubbles.
  9. Bake for approx 50 mins, until tester comes out with only a few crumbs on it.4
  10. Cool for around 5 mins before removing from pan.
  11. Remove from pan and let cool the rest of the way.

Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and drizzle the rum butter sauce below over the icecream and the cake.

Rum Butter Sauce

This is where the real magic happens.

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup whipping cream
  • 2 tablespoons of rum (white or dark)
  • 1 pinch of salt

Directions:

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
  2. Stir in sugar and cook until simmering (about 4 mins).
  3. Remove from heat.
  4. Whisk in cream.
  5. Return to heat and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.5
  6. Cook, stirring constantly until thickened enough to leave a trail. About 6 mins.6
  7. Remove from heat.
  8. Whisk in rum and salt.
  9. Let cool.

Footnotes and commentary.

  1. Seriously, if you’re not generous with your butter and flour, it will stick and make a mess when you try to get it out. It’s a delicious mess, but it won’t be worthy of taking photos of and posting online, though honestly, sometimes the mess is better. ↩︎
  2. Careful, it can boil over. ↩︎
  3. The chemistry has started here once the wets and dries are mixed. The baking soda has started breaking down to release CO2 once it hits the acid in the wets. ↩︎
  4. Make sure it’s cooked well through. It can sometimes be too wet, and then it’s kind of off with the texture. We’ve had to make a second one some years because it was too gooey. ↩︎
  5. This can be tricky because it can boil over. You basically have to bring it to a boil, watching carefully and constantly stirring, then back the heat off when it starts to boil, and whisking madly until it stops boiling. ↩︎
  6. Your hands will be so sticky. ↩︎