Holiday Gingerbread Cake
This festive holiday gingerbread cake combines spiced gingerbread cake layers loaded with snowy cream cheese frosting and surrounded by a forest of gingerbread cookie trees. It's an edible winter wonderland!
Servings: 10 servings
Ingredients
For the cake
- 1 cup unsalted butter, or 2 sticks, room temperature
- 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup molasses
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 Tbsp ground ginger
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp ground cloves
- 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup half and half, or whole milk
For the frosting
- 16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 6 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 pinch salt, or to taste
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice (optional)
For decorating
- 1/2 batch gingerbread cookies, cooled and decorated (depending on the size of your cookies, you will need about 10-12 cookies)
Instructions
For the gingerbread cake
- Preheat oven to 350F. Butter 2 9-inch round cake pans, and place a circle of parchment paper at the bottom of the pans.
- In an electric stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar for several minutes until very pale and fluffy. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each one, to thoroughly incorporate them.
- Add the molasses, salt, baking powder, and spices, and mix well.
- With the mixer running on low, slowly add the flour, alternating with the half and half. Stop mixing when everything is evenly combined. Give the mixture a final stir by hand to incorporate anything that might be stuck to the sides or the bottom of the bowl.
- Divide the batter between the two pans, and bake for 25-30 minutes, until risen and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. A toothpick inserted into the center of the cake should come out with no wet batter clinging to it.
- The cake layers can be made 1 or 2 days in advance. Keep wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator until ready to frost.
For the cream cheese frosting
- In an electric stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter for a couple minutes until very smooth and well mixed.
- Add the powdered sugar, a cup or so at a time, beating briefly between each addition. Add the salt, and mix to combine.
- Taste the frosting, and if you would like it to be a bit more tangy, add the lemon juice and mix to combine. You could also add 1-2 tsp of vanilla extract or other flavoring of your choice.
- If your frosting is a little bit loose, place it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to firm up before frosting your cake.
To decorate the cake
- Frost the cake with a thick layer of the cream cheese frosting, I used almost all of it. For a swoopy top, make sure you have a nice thick layer of frosting on the top of the cake, and use the back of a spoon to make small swirls, scraping the excess frosting off of the spoon between swirls.
- Carefully place your decorated gingerbread cookies around the outside of the cake, pressing them in slightly.
- Refrigerate the cake until ready to serve. If you've included some tall cookies like the trees here, you might need to remove a shelf in your refrigerator to accommodate the height!