Tesuque Upside-down Gingerbread
Posted by Amanda on 18 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Bread, dessert
I was tired, a little cranky and probably just dehydrated when we stopped at the Tesuque Village Market which was actually pretty nice, though in that slightly overwrought local flair kind of way that things can get to be in vacation hotspots. But they had a big farm table where we could sit down for our afternoon tea and after I exploded one kombucha all over the place and started in on another I actually read all three free local papers cover to cover. I was thinking, mostly, about how to measure all this local coverage against the crisis in journalism. I was noticing this a lot on our trip, actually: that New Mexico appears at a glance to be pretty rich with newsprint. Local papers cover local school boards. Big, in depth investigative reporting I didn’t see so much of, but I don’t expect that in the Jemez Thunder (no, they’re not online).
But then suddenly I found myself thinking about molasses and ginger.
Here’s where this story is going: I clipped a recipe without noting the author of the cooking column who posed the Very Important Question (should gingerbread be all about the molasses or not?) or keeping any hint as to which of the free local papers (not the Jemez Thunder) I was reading. Which is terrible, because it was (is) pretty great. Also, it is an upside-down cake. She called it “Pear and Gingerbread Upside-down Cake” but I think that is kind of unwieldy.
The cake is a little bit of a pain in the butt (I always think it is a pain to get out my mixer, secretly) but it comes out great. Note: it is also huge. It was the only dessert (there was ice cream) at a 20 person potluck last night and we got through just over half.
First of all: Start some water boiling, start the oven at 350°. Melt ½ stick butter in a 10″ iron skillet or other oven-safe pan. Add ¾ cup brown sugar and leave it on low for a few minutes until the sugar and butter are kind of melting together. Smooth out the sugar and arrange 3 thinly sliced pears and arrange them in the skillet. Or just scatter them. Your call. You could actually do all of this in a pie tin or cake pan in the oven, which might have been smarter since an iron skillet is impossible to transport. Whatever. Set it aside.
Second of all: In a biggish measuring cup put ¾ cup molasses (I use “robust” because it sounds somewhat punkrock.) and 1¼ cup boiling water to dissolve the molasses. Beat 1 stick butter and ½ cup brown sugar until creamy. As ever, the butter should be soft and the brown sugar should be packed firmly. Add 1 egg and beat s’more. Use a big bowl because the whole cake is ending up in here.
Mix together your dry ingredients: 2 ½ cup flour, 1½ tsp baking soda, 1tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, ½ tsp ground cloves, ½ tsp salt. If you’re clever, you’d get the dry ingredients together while the mixer is working its magic on the butter and sugar, though that only works if you have a stand mixer. If I were one to write daily lists of gratitudes, Noah’s Sunbeam mixer that predates planned obsolescence by at least a decade would probably make the list often. Or at least as often as I bake. Which is not that often.
Where was I? Oh! So you’ve got topping set aside in the bottom of your pan, dry ingredients, butter/sugar/egg creamed and molasses in hot water. Right? Now: alternately add flour and molasses with the mixer on low speed, adding a quarter of the dry ingredients at a time, mixing just until combined and scraping down your sides with a spatula. You know all that already because you make cakes all the time. Pour the batter gently over the pears and bake it until it passes the clean knife test, about 40 minutes.
Let it cool some before you flip it over. Enjoy.