A Trifling Ginger Molasses Cake

This dessert did double duty. We were having a potluck at work on Thursday AND I knew Sugar High Friday was the next day - how convenient! I leapt on the molasses bandwagon with sticky abandon.

First, I had to find a recipe. Last week I indulged my molasses lust with Garlic Tofu Bites from a Whole Foods recipe.. But for Sugar High Friday I needed something sweeter and more molasses-y.

I picked up a Ginger Cake recipe from www.epicurious.com. I wanted something pretty simple, since I knew I would be making it between 6:30 and 8 a.m.

I got up and got to baking, splattering the whole kitchen with molasses and flour in the process (I am a natural-born mess. If I were a Peanuts character, I would be Pigpen .

The recipe involves a lot of ginger and a lot of cinnamon, as well as a whole cup of molasses and another of butter. These are a few of my favorite things. The wild part comes when you add baking soda to a molasses and hot water mix - it makes a huge brown foamy bowl of molasses sauce.

The instructions say you can either put this in a 9 inch springform pan or 18 muffin tins. Since my springforms are sadly missing in action, I went the muffin route. The little cakes baked up well, but then, well, wouldn't come out of the tins.

The cake is so soft and tender that the tops ripped right off or chunks of the bottom stayed stuck to the tins.

Desperation being the mother of invention, I decided to improvise. I cranked out a batch of wonderful Straus organic whipped cream , lined a bowl with it, and started adding cake chunks. More whipped cream, more cake. Voila -kind of a last-minute trifle.

I took it to work and people loved it. They didn't know it was a saved disaster.

Next time I make it, I would add some fruit - peaches or cherries or something to add more texture. And if I had time, I might even make some pudding or pastry cream so I could call it a real trifle. But even being a fake trifle, it was dang good.