Gingerbread Cake

At the grocery checkout I swipe my credit card in the reader, tap the “OK” button, and the pleasant fellow hands me my receipt and then stuffs a box of cookies in one of my bags.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“A box of ginger snaps. They’re free!” he replies.

I wonder what’s the catch. My dad once told me, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And he was right, so I doubt there could be any such thing as a free box of ginger snaps. I look at the fellow and raise an eyebrow.

“Yes, they’re free,” he says with a broad smile. “We just opened our 365^th store, and to celebrate we’re giving everyone who makes a purchase today a box of cookies.”

“Well, thanks very much,” I say, gathering up the bags. “Free cookies, how cool is that?” On the way to the car I wonder how many times could this opportunity be worked - you know, buy one mushroom at a time and get the free box of ginger snaps - before they call security. Tempting to find out, but no. I like these people, and want them to let me in the store the next time I need groceries.

Cookies around here are not a good idea. Once the box is open, things slip past the point of no return and I have great difficulty eating just a few. So when I get home I stuff the box on the shelf and largely forget about it. Until one day, oh look, there’s the box of ginger snaps, and it just so happens I’m making an afternoon cup of tea. I take the box from the shelf and open it up, and find for store-bought (or in this case store-give) they’re pretty good.

No surprise, they go fast. Later that afternoon I go for another cookie, and boo-hoo, they’re all gone. Just kidding! The box lasts a few days, but a point in time comes when there are no more. And sniff, it’s again time for tea and I’ve gotten rather used to a few (O.K., more than a few) cookies along with it. Bummer. Sipping the boring, lonely cup of tea, I get thinking about making ginger snaps. But past experience tells me as much as I love eating cookies, making them is a pain. Way too fussy, all those little balls of dough, and trays going in and out of the oven, and if you space out, that trayful is burned and so on.

Flash! A bolt of inspiration to make a gingerbread cake hits me. The last time I had gingerbread cake was at The Tea House, served warm, with fresh whipped cream on top… oh my. And making a cake is more my style.

I consult the source of all truth and find a recipe. It calls for a 9 x 9 pan and I actually have one. This must be a sign. Moving on to the ingredients, most already reside in the kitchen, except for ginger, molasses, and a fresh lemon, so they go on the list. And I decide to get another pound of butter. Winter’s coming on, so ‘tis the season for having some extra butterfat on hand, and in turn, on mid-section. On the way to the store I decide to use fresh ginger instead of powdered. Fresh is always better, right? So I buy a gnarly brown rhizome of ginger, aka the root.

I get home, it’s a grey afternoon. O.K., I’m all set. A gingerbread cake is in my immediate future. I lay out all the ingredients. But how much ginger root equals one teaspoon of powdered? Going back to the source of all truth, everyone says the same thing: do not substitute ginger root for powder, or visa versa. Apparently the flavors can be quite different. But I didn’t get any powdered ginger and I do not want to go back to the store for just one item. Ugh.

Ah, but there’s The Spice Lady. Her shop is within walking distance and getting out for a stroll would be good. It’s cold and raw outside, the air smells like snow. I bundle up and head out, take a new street and discover a whole little sub-neighborhood I never knew about.

The Spice Lady has powdered ginger and I buy a little packet of it. And we talk about making curries, something I’ve been procrastinating over for a long time. After expressing my enthusiasm on the subject to Vic, two, count ’em two years ago, she gave me a lovely mortar and pestle for grinding the whatevers to make curry, and well, it hasn’t seen any use. Yet. Anyway, the lady who is The Spice Lady has a few pointers to get me on my curry journey, like first I’ll need to come up with a recipe. So I put the packet of ginger powder in my pocket and go home. By the time I get back it’s more the time to cook dinner than gingerbread, so I put all the ingredients away.

The next day I pull them all out. Again. This is when I discover the plastic bagful of brown sugar is hard as a rock. Oh c’mon! There is however a trick of putting a slice of apple in the with sugar, seal it up and put it in the fridge. For a few days. I look in the fridge and find I do not have any apples. At this point, no way am I going to the grocery for an apple. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I moisten a piece of paper towel, stuff it in the bag, seal it and put it in the fridge. And put all the other ingredients away. Again.

I check daily on the sugar. Day one: hard as a rock. Day two: hard as a rock. Day three: slight signs of softening. I look at the lemon. It’s not as perky as it was three days ago. The time is now, I gotta make my move. I take the paper towel out of the sugar bag, dribble a bit of water directly on the sugar, seal it and put it in the sun on my work table. While I’m at the computer trying to figure out which word comes next, I mess with it. I poke at it, push it, twist it. In all, I worry it to death and with the help of old sol, by mid-afternoon I have a bag of soft brown sugar.

I get all the ingredients out and go to work. I am on a mission.

Standing there with the mixer going, the butter, eggs, sugar, and molasses splatter around in the bowl. We’re on our way. Hmm… I’m wearing a dress shirt. No apron. I don’t even own an apron. I think of my dad. He’d come home from work in his jacket and tie, pull in the garage and immediately start tinkering with something under the hood of the car. Having a propensity for old British and French iron, there was always something needing tinkering, and the tangle of odd bits and pieces called an engine was always a grimy, oily mess. This would drive my mother crazy. “You don’t do the laundry!” she would sputter. He’d look up and pretend to wipe his hands on his jacket, and grin. The apple falls close to the tree. A good blob of what’s flying around in the bowl landing on the front of my shirt will total it. But I do not stop and change shirts. No. Nothing will stop me now.

Glancing at the recipe, it says, “Preheat oven to 350 degrees.”

Haven’t done that yet. I hope the oven works.

Gordon Bunker