Tuesdays With Dorie: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

Heather of Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread for this week's TWD. I love gingerbread and chocolate but have never had the pair together, in fact I would never have thought to pair them up.

For this recipe Dorie listed an optional ingredient I am not familiar with, stem ginger, young ginger that has been peeled and preserved in a sugar syrup. Since I didn't feel like going out of my way too much looking for some, I just threw in some extra fresh grated ginger (and because I was out of ginger powder). I made this in a 9x13 pan and baked for 36 minutes (at 30 mins, it was still wiggly in the center).

*I just realized it should've been a 9x9 pan, even after reading Dorie's note on TWD! Oh well, it's still a cake, and came out just as good as any other.

I doubled the icing, because I baked it in a 9x13, I had more surface to cover.

Dorie also suggested serving this with ginger-infused whipped cream. YUM! So of course I did! Just heat up the whipped cream with fresh ginger, let steep, cool in the fridge, strain, and then whip up with a little powdered sugar to sweeten.

My review on this is, it certainly has some bold flavors going on, I wasn't crazy about it, and it wasn't super kid friendly here either. There's the ginger flavor, with all the chocolate, and then the chocolate icing enhanced with the coffee. After letting it sit even longer (I baked it the night before, and we ate it for dessert the next night), the icing (much like a ganache) just melted in your mouth, mmm. Then it turned on me day 3. It became dry and crumbly. Day 4 even worse. Day 5, the last 3 pieces are headed to the trash. Sorry Dorie!

I know other TWDers liked this, but I will probably stick to my basic gingerbread recipe.