Easy Gingerbread Traybake

Elena Butuc

As promised, I'm showing you the quick gingerbread recipe, baked in a tray. It's fluffy and soft but, if you leave it uncovered for 1-2 days, it gets a bit more like the classic gingerbread cookies. This recipe is, in fact, the most popular Christmas dessert in Poland and is called "Pjernik". Usually, it's spread with sour plum jam and glazed with chocolate, so it's pure madness. I suggest trying this gingerbread, at least in the simple version, maybe sprinkled with some powdered sugar on top or any icing you like.

It's simple and fast to prepare. Make sure you don't omit the spices (in the worst case, put only cinnamon), they give a special flavor and color. If you look at all these spices separately, you'll think they don't fit in here, but combined and ground they give an extraordinary aroma. I gave below the recipe for this spice mix, which I made myself and ground in a coffee grinder. It's a pretty generous amount, you can share and make someone else happy or just make less.

You can adjust the height of the cake by the size of the oven tray. Here I have a 20x30cm tray. If you use the simple oven sheet, it won't be very thick. It can also be baked in a springform pan, the round one with removable bottom, but be careful with the quantities, as it will be a bit higher. You can cut it in half in this case, spread the layers with plum jam and glaze with melted chocolate on top - this way you'll have the best gingerbread cake :)

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Ingredients

Metric US

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Sugar

100 g

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Egg

3 pieces

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Honey

200 g

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Butter

125 g

soft, at room temperature

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Sour cream

100 g

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All-Purpose Flour

210 g

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Cinnamon powder

2 tsp

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Baking powder

2 tsp

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Cacao powder

1 tbsp

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Gingerbread spices

1 tsp

I combined together: 25g - cinnamon stick; 5g - ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, anise; 2g - black peppercorns

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Chopped Nuts

50 g

optional

Step by step

Step 1

First of all, start with the spice mix for the cake. If you aren't making it or you've already bought it, omit these steps. However, I recommend making a small effort and prepare it yourself, the difference is big.

So, here I weighed all the whole spices I had from the ones listed at ingredients.

Step 2

Grind in the coffee grinder and make the powder as fine as possible.

Step 3

To these, I added the ground spices I bought - ginger and nutmeg. Mix well and notice that you have a generous amount of spices. Store in an airtight jar and save for other times or give as a gift to other people.

Step 4

Now you can prepare the batter:

- separate the egg whites from the yolks.

Step 5

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with a mixer.

Step 6

In another bowl, combine soft butter with sugar, mix well.

Step 7

Add in the yolks, sour cream and honey, beat well with the mixer.

Step 8

Combine the flour with baking powder, 1 tablespoon of cocoa, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of gingerbread spices (you can add more but then it might be a little too spicy).