• Recipes
• Pastry
• Bread
• Gingerbread bars with hard sauce glaze

Once the days shorten and the weather cools, I crave gingerbread. But I don’t care much for gingerbread that’s like cake, so I figured I’d start with a recipe for a bar, perhaps like a blondie, and then substitute molasses for some of the sugar, and add my favorite gingerbread spices. Then I stumbled on Mrs. Rombauer’s “Molasses Brownie” in the 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking. I like to add a bit of baking chocolate to my molasses cookies – not enough to notice a chocolate flavor, but enough to deepen the flavor and give it just the slightest bitter edge – so I played with the Molasses Brownie recipe to create these gingerbread bars. I use less chocolate and a bit less molasses, substitute brown sugar for white and, of course, add ginger and a good bit of nutmeg. I find cinnamon distracting in gingerbread, so I don’t use it here, but you can add some, of course, if you like. If you decide to use unsweetened chocolate, please be warned: it gives a much stronger bitter edge to the bars, given how relatively little sweetener there is in the batter. Some people like that, others don't. If baking these for a crowd, I strongly recommend using a sweetened dark chocolate. Mr. T suggested I add a fruit brandy to the glaze which, with a bit of melted butter in it, ends up tasting all the world like hard sauce. Enjoy!! ;o)

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