Over the last year I have subscribed to the lovely cooking magazine Bon Appetit. Every month I look forward to receiving that glossy magazine, and flipping through each page devouring all the amazing pictures of food and getting excited about all the future meals I will be cooking – inevitably though, after having read the magazine cover to cover, I put the magazine a side and forget all about it.

So I have decided to give myself my very own personal challenge, whereby each month I have to make at least four items from the current month BA issue. It shouldn’t be that difficult, one meal a week – but we all know how quickly time flies and suddenly weeks have gone by and you’re wondering where the time went! Can you believe that it is already the 4th of December?!

So for my first challenge, yesterday I made the Gingerbread Cake (Dec 2011, page 44). as we had some friends come over in the afternoon for some coffee and cake.. in fact one of the couple who came over were the ones who told us about the two kitties who needed a home, so they came over to really visit the kittens – we were just an added bonus!

Gingerbread Cake

For the Cake:

• Non-stick vegetbale oil spray
• 1 ½  cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• ¾ tsp ground cinnamon (I put in a full tsp)
• ¾ tsp kosher salt
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda (I realise as I am typing this, that I completely forgot to put this in!)
• ½ cup unsalted butter, cut into ½” pieces (this works out to be 113g)
• ½ cup (packed) light brown sugar
• ½ cup mild-flavoured (light) molasses (I used half molasses and half honey as I didn’t have light molasses
• 1 large egg, beaten to blend
• 2 tsp grated peeled ginger

For the Topping:

• 1 cup chilled heavy cream
• 1tbsp powdered sugar
• ¼ cup store-bought lemon curd
• Finely grated lemon zest

Cake

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Coat pan with non-stick spray. Line bottom with parchment paper; spray paper.

Whisk flour and next 5 ingredients in a medium bowl.

Place butter in a large bowl, pour ½ cup boiling water over the butter, whisk until melted.

Whisk in sugar and next 3 ingredients. Add dry ingredientnts and whisk to blend.

Transfer to prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until tester inserted into centre of the cake comes out clean.  Let cool for 10 minutes, invert onto  a wire rack, let cool and remove parchment.

Topping

Beat cream and sugar in a medium bowl until firm peaks form. Fold in curd, leaving swirls. Spread over cake, Garnish with zest and serve.

The verdict?

The cake went down really well with everybody.

 The cake itself was really moist and very “gingerbready” in lack of a better word, and the topping had this lovely sharp citrus flavour which cut through the spiced cake.

Considering how easy, and quickly it went, and the fact that I didn’t mess it up – I will definitely be making this cake again.

My only slight critiscism of the recipe is that the recipe for the topping makes an awful lot of cream. I used less than half on the top of the cake, although I did keep it, and let my guest put more cream on the side.