Orange & Bourbon Gingerbread Loaf
Every year, gingerbread cookies dominate the holiday scene. The unsung hero of Christmas desserts is a heavily spiced gingerbread loaf with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. This loaf is infused with ginger, orange, zest, and bourbon, the perfect combination to warm you inside and out on a cold snowy night. This moist cake is made only better with the strong winter spices that come through with every bite!
What I Want in a Gingerbread
Starting from Betty Crocker box mixes when I was young, I’ve always been a gingerbread loaf vs cookie person. Throughout the years when I actually learned how to use a mixer, I’ve developed exactly what I want from that loaf. Let’s be honest, the goal of every gingerbread loaf is to taste the way it looks in a kid’s holiday book.
My biggest priorities for a good gingerbread loaf are strong molasses flavours, low levels of sweetness, punchy mulling spices, and prominent amounts of orange zest. Bourbon just happens to go well with all of these things, and who am I to deny such a perfect flavour combination. A good loaf should be soft and moist, and the scent should fill your entire house while it’s being made.
This recipe is the culmination of the last few years of questionable gingerbread passion and has become my ideal gingerbread loaf. Hopefully it checks your gingerbread boxes as well!
What’s Infused Sugar?
Sugar often seems to act like a sponge that just soaks in the flavour around it. Too often it’s treated as an additive and not properly utilized to deepen the flavour profile and increase complexity of a dish. Citrus has the unique ability to bind even more tightly to the sugar molecules than the average ingredient. In most cases, infusing sugar involves some sort of heat unless the introduced ingredient has its own binding properties. In the case of oranges, and other citrus, this property is called Citrus Pectin, and is made from the white pith in the zest or peel. This pectin is a naturally occurring polysaccharide (aka “many/complex sugars”) and is often used as a natural thickening agent. Pectins and sugars are used chemically as both stabilizers and structure builders.
Modified Citrus Pectin
The combination of processed sugar and citrus pectin helps not only to give strength to your batter, which helps with rise and moisture levels, but also helps to deepen the flavours you’re attempting to impart. Because the sugar is being used to suck up all that orange flavour, the compounds making up those iconic tastes are at a much lower risk of denaturing and disappearing during your bake. By using infused sugar rather than sugar and zest separately, you’re also helping to distribute the subtle flavours more evenly throughout your bake.
The bottom line is that infused sugar is a cheap and easy way to make your ingredients pull their weight more for your bake and give you more bang for your buck!
Orange & Bourbon Gingerbread Loaf
Simone Peironnet | 12/2/2022
prep time: 15 minutes | cook time: 50 | total time: 55 minutes
Servings: 4-6
Ingredients:
- 1 Orange, zested
- ½ Cup Brown Sugar
- 500 g All Purpose Flour
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 2 Tbsp Ginger Powder
- 2 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1 ½ tsp Ground Cloves
- 1 tsp Ground Cardamom
- 1 ½ tsp Allspice
- ¼ tsp Nutmeg
- Healthy pinch of salt & black pepper
- 1 Cup Dark/Unsulphured Molasses
- 1 Cup Hot Water
- 1 Cup Butter, room temperature
- 2 Eggs, room temperature
- 1.5 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Tbsp Honey
- 1 Tbsp Bourbon
Equipment:
- 5x9" Loaf Pan
- Pastry Brush
Serving Suggestions:
- Vanilla Ice Cream
Instructions:
2. Preheat your oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease and flour or line your 5”x9” loaf tin.
3. In a large bowl, combine your flour, baking powder, baking soda, dry spices, salt, and pepper. Mix until well combined and set aside.
4. In a heat proof bowl, mix your molasses and hot water until emulsified and well combined.
5. In a large bowl, beat your room temperature butter until creamed, around one minute if using an electric mixer. Scrape down the sides and add your infused sugar, beating again for around 1 minute until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then add your vanilla.
6. On low, add your flour and molasses to your wet mixture in 3 batches, alternating between flour and molasses. Mix until just combined between each batch to avoid overmixing.
7. Pour into your greased baking tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out cleanly.
8. While your loaf bakes, combine your honey and bourbon in a small bowl and set aside.
9. Once baked, remove from the oven and brush the top with your honey-bourbon mixture. It will hiss and sizzle because of the heat differences. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then serve and enjoy!
Product Suggestions for this Recipe
Our favourite cake molds havembeen thrifted but we tried to find some of our favourite types of baking equipment at easier-to-access-locations.