This Sunday, for Sweet Melissa, we baked gingerbread made with Guinness beer. Guinness has such a deep, almost caramel-chocolate flavor that it works well with the molasses and ginger flavors of this bread.
At the end of last week, the weather report for the weekend was 103 degrees on Saturday, and 109 degress on Sunday. I wasn't sure I'd do any baking at all over the weeknd as I wanted to keep the house as cool as possible. Central California can get scorchingly hot in the summer, and it seems we are getting summer weather early this year.
In the end, I did bake the gingerbread really early Sunday morning. I made cupcakes instead of a large cake to reduce the baking time. To frost the cupcakes I made a simple cream cheese frosting of cream cheese, powdered sugar, almond extract, and cinnamon. I decorated the cupcakes with bits of crystallized ginger.
This gingerbread recipe is so easy to make and has a nice flavor-not too heavy and not overly sweet. The cinnamon in the frosting worked really well with the ginger flavored cupcakes. To read more about this recipe please see the cute blog, Katiecakes. http://iheartkatiecakes.blogspot.com/
Find other Sweet Melissa bloggers at: http://sweetmelissasundays.wordpress.com/
You can expect mainly light, oven-free recipes from me for the rest of the week. It' so hot that Dave hasn't even felt like eating (gasp!).
Love your cupcakes! They look great!
ReplyDeleteThese again look delicious, I love cupcakes more than a whole cake. You have to come visit so you can make us desserts. :)
ReplyDeleteOoh! I love the cupcakes. They look delicious.
ReplyDeleteI hear you loud and clear about the weather. It's over 100 degrees here - which is EXACTLY why I didn't make this recipe.
ReplyDeleteI love your can of ginger, the bear is too cute! Your cupcakes look delcious and the frosting sounds so good!!!
ReplyDeleteI don't like beer but these sound delicious.
ReplyDeleteCute cupcakes! I'm a cupcake baker too and i have no idea why it didnt dawn on me to do the same.
ReplyDeleteMmmm...cupcakes!! They look great and the frosting sounds wonderful, too. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThe cream cheese frosting sounds delicious!
ReplyDeleteYour gingerbread looks great!! I'm a huge fan of cream cheese frosting. I think it pairs so nicely with the spicy gingerbread. And the crystallized ginger atop the cuppies is just perfect!! Sorry that I've been an absent commenter; I just finished up my law school exams and am finally getting around to my google reader.
ReplyDeleteI love the cuppies with the extra ginger on top, looks terrific.
ReplyDeleteThank you Cristine and Wendy!
ReplyDeleteSandy- every time I visit you are dieting and can't eat sweets!
Megan- it's so awful trying to bake in a super hot kitchen.
Thank you Fit Chick!
ReplyDeleteCheryl- you can't really taste the beer, but I imagine you could use apple juice or buttermilk instead.
Thank you Karen, Pamela, and The Bahens!
ReplyDeleteElyse- I hope your exams went well, and you now have a bit of time to relax.
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