Gingerbread Latte Cake
Layers of moist spicy gingerbread cake and soft coffee-vanilla-bean whipped cream. This cake is inspired by cold afternoons sipping vanilla lattes with molasses cookies.
Servings: 12
Equipment
- 2 8-inch round cake pans
Ingredients
- 8 ounces unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 4 eggs room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups molasses
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 cups freshly brewed coffee piping hot
Vanilla Coffee Whipped Cream
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons sugar or vanilla sugar
- Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
- 2 teaspoons instant coffee crushed slightly
Instructions
For the gingerbread cake:
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter 2 8-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.
- Prepare your coffee and keep it hot.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and spices and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until soft and fluffy. Add sugar; beat one minute.
- Add your eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Add molasses and blend until thoroughly mixed.
- Add dry ingredients; mix just until combined.
- With mixer on low, slowly add hot coffee. Stop and scrape sides of bowl as needed. When all your coffee is mixed in, you should have a smooth, pourable batter.
- Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Sides of cake should start to pull away from pan and a toothpick inserted in center should come out clean.
- Allow to cool at least 20 minutes before inverting and removing cakes from pans. Allow to cool completely.
For the vanilla coffee whipped cream:
- Beat cream with an electric mixer until soft peaks form.
- Add sugar, vanilla bean seeds, and instant coffee powder. Whisk ingredients together gently. I like to frost my cakes with whipped cream somewhere between soft and medium peaks, so try not to over-whip your cream here.
To assemble the cake:
- Remove parchment from bottoms of cakes. Trim tops of cakes to make cake layers even and flat, if necessary. (You could also slice each cake in half horizontally to make a 4-layer cake, if you wish.)
- Spread a thick layer of whipped cream on bottom cake. Place top cake on top of cream and press gently to adhere.
- Frost entire cake with a very thin layer of whipped cream to crumb coat it. Chill in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.
- Finishing frosting the cake with the remaining whipped cream, swirling or piping it as desired.
- Sprinkle cake with a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg and decorate as you see fit!