So I Bake with a Sody-Pop, or, A Simple Cake Made Somewhat Complicated

I decided to run an experiment, today. For the past couple of years, the thing that's been all over the internet is the cake made from one box of cake mix and one can of pop (soda, to you on the coasts, and for my friends & family south of the Mason-Dixon, whatever flavor of Coke you have).

Well, I have gluten-free cake mixes, and they require a slightly different treatment from the regular mixes: where the usual Duncan Hines and such call for water, oil and eggs, the Aldi yellow cake mix ups the ante and calls for milk instead of the water.  And, so, to the powdered milk box I went, and added 1/3 cup of dry Carnation brand. Plus, I put in some powdered egg equivalent to three actual eggs sans liquid, two tablespoons of butter powder, and a trace of cinnamon. Because.

My choice for pop was one which, around here, is only occasionally to be found at the Big Lots stores, and I like drinking it so much I was reluctant to risk it in such a manner, but, nothing ventured...

And, of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I plumped and tenderized some dried cranberries in hot water (okay, I plunked them into water and nuked them for 90 seconds, until they started to boil), then drained them and tossed them in brown sugar and cinnamon, to be strewn throughout and more on top.

Sometimes I could probably use a supervisor to tell me when I'm making things unnecessarily complicated, especially as involves the brainless cake. After all, the point of this was supposed to be to see if I could make a tasty cake with just a box of gluten free mix and a bottle of pop. 

But I think I can safely say that it is possible. Just not by me.


Simple cake made complicated (sort of)

Ingredients:

1 box gluten-free yellow cake mix
1 (12-ounce) bottle of your zippiest ginger brew or ginger ale
1/3 cup powdered milk
6 Tablespoons powdered egg
2 Tablespoons powdered butter
3 teaspoons cinnamon, separated
1/2 cup dried cranberries, plumped in hot water and then drained
2 Tablespoons brown sugar or brown sugar substitute, plus a little more for decoration

Directions:

With the rack in the center of the oven, preheat oven to 350º F.

Grease the bottom of an 8"x8" cake pan, then line bottom of pan with parchment, and lightly grease that (you can trim off the flaps, if you want, but I like to leave them there, to help with removing cake from pan later on, as well as removing parchment from cake).

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk or sift together all the dry ingredients except the brown sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon, until they are completely mixed.

In a small bowl, mix together the cranberries, brown sugar, and remaining 2 teaspoons cinnamon.

Fold in the soda pop with a rubber (or silicone) mixing spatula.

Pour half the batter into the pan. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the cranberry mixture across the surface, then pour the remaining cake batter over that, and sprinkle the rest of the cranberry mixture on top. If desired, top with a light sprinkling of more brown sugar, to create a sparkly crust (it gets a little bit that way on its own – it's the nature of this mix already to be faintly crisp-topped).

Bake at 350º F for 41-45 minutes, or, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely in pan on cooling rack.

Serve with cinnamon/ginger whipped cream or a small scoop of ice cream and some cinnamon sugar.

Bringing Sweet to the Heat: Candied Ginger

The Bat is not the biggest fan of ginger, unless it's in a cookie with the word "snap" in its name. But when those cookies are on the menu, she's as goofy about our home-baked ones as Pop is... largely because not only are they crisp, like a good ginger snap should be, but because they bite back. I like to bring the heat. And my new favorite tool for that is homemade candied ginger.

Making the stuff is pretty straightforward, but you do rather need an accurate scale, a kitchen mandoline (or a lot of skill at slicing evenly, repeatedly),  and some real work time -- set aside a good two hours for the process. 

And ventilation. You will probably want to run a fan or open a window while you work with this. I love the smell of ginger, raw or cooked, but as it boils, it can be a bit overwhelming (it's not quite as bad as trying to dehydrate ghost peppers, but use caution, nonetheless).

Beyond that, it's just water and equal parts peeled fresh ginger and granulated sugar.

Candied Ginger

Ingredients:

5 cups water (about 1.2 liters)

Approximately 1 lb.  (0.453 kg) fresh ginger, peeled

Approximately 1 lb. granulated sugar

Directions:

Starting with a nice firm, sleek, non-wrinkly, large "hand" of ginger weighing a little over a pound. Peel it (if you're not sure how best to strip ginger nekkid, see this). 

Pour 5 cups water into a medium saucepan. Using your kitchen mandoline, slice ginger across the grain into 1/8-inch (about 3 mm) "coins", and place directly into the water. Cover, and bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Continue to boil, stirring occasionally, until ginger becomes somewhat tender, about 35-45 minutes.

While it is boiling, coat a cooling rack with nonstick spray, then set it over a jelly roll pan (sided cookie sheet) lined with parchment. 

When the ginger is softened, drain it in a colander, retaining the water.* 

At this point, you will need to weigh your ginger. Measure out an equal weight of sugar, and put that and the cooked ginger into the saucepan, adding 1/4 cup (.06 liters) water.

Again on medium-high heat, bring the ginger to a boil, and allow it to continue, uncovered, until the moisture is mostly cooked away (about 20 minutes), stirring often.

During the final stages, you will want to keep a close eye on it, as it goes very quickly from this

Mmm…juicy

to this.

Mmmm…crumbly.

When it reaches the dry, crumbly state, immediately remove it from heat and spread it out on the cooling rack which rests above parchment.  Allow it to cool, store in a sealed container in your refrigerator for up to six months.

And, do you see all that crumbly sugar all over it, and falling down between the bars of the rack? Save it in another airtight container… you'll want to use it on top of cookies or pies, or to drop into a cup of tea. 

Or to nosh on when nobody is looking.

It's gingery, after all.

*The remaining water can be frozen in an ice cube tray and the cubes added later to tea – or other beverages – for a little zip.

Make it Snappy – Ginger Snappy!

Pop expressed disappointment when he discovered that the Bat and I returned from the grocery store, yesterday, with only one small package of cookies (and cheap ones, at that!). They weren't bottom-of-the-line dollar store imitation-food cookies, though. They were from Aldi.

Nevertheless, to a cookie junkie, it's tough to see bags devoid of classic recipes.

So, in order to satisfy the growling beast within him, I set to, in the kitchen, today.

Besides, there's a chance a few people might stop by, after the parade today (our harvest-time fair is in town, and it opens with a nice, big parade, and we live within the safe parking zone).

So, to the kitchen!

This particular recipe is a combination of three different recipes, aspects of each we like, in this house, but each one was not quite what we wanted. This one seems to suit all three of us.

Indeed, Pop was so happy, he absconded with three before I could get this shot (please note the not-quite-so-tidy rows, trying to hide the evidence).

Ginger Snaps

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) salted butter (no substitution), softened at room temperature
2 Tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 cups molasses
4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking soda
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons hot Mexican chili powder
sugar for rolling dough in

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, fresh ginger, and sugar until light and lemon-colored. Add in egg and molasses, beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger, salt, nutmeg, ground cloves, and chili powder. Add to creamed butter, mix well.*

Scoop by teaspoon and shape into balls, roll in sugar, and place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350º F for 15 minutes. Cool on rack.

Makes 90+ cookies.

*If you find the dough is too soft to work easily, place in the refrigerator for about a half hour, until it stiffens up a little. At this time, you might also want to roll portions of the dough into "sausage" rolls, about 1 1/2 inch to 2 inches in diameter, wrapped in plastic, to be put away in the freezer for later use.

Update: I've made a batch of these using gluten-free all-purpose flour (I used Bob's Red Mill). There had to be a couple of adjustments, in order to keep the crispness and not lose the heat, though. Instead of using 4 cups of the gluten-free AP flour, I used 1 1/2 cups of sweet rice flour and 2 1/2 cups AP flour, plus 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum. I also allowed the dough to chill overnight in the refrigerator, and then still used the 1 teaspoon cookie scoop to form the balls before rolling in sugar & baking on ungreased pans. Because of the change in flour/starch composition they didn't need to bake the full 15 minutes, but were done after only 12 minutes – plus about a minute of cooling down on the cookie sheet before removing them to the cooling rack. They're a little lighter in texture than the standard ginger snap, but they keep the flavor and the crispness a person wants in a snap cookie.

Update update: almost forgot to mention, I used some of the leftover sugar from having made candied ginger, in the bowl of sugar I rolled the GF cookie dough in, for that extra bit of zing. If you do this, you will not regret it.

These are my gluten-free version