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We were up in Napa on Sunday. A friend was kind enough to give me a copy of the recently released 'Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired by the Seasons'. At first glance it looked great. Quick bio on the author Maria Helm Sinsky; she was executive chef at Plumpjack Cafe here in SF, and was named one of the 'Best New Chefs in America' by Food and Wine. The book is divided into four main sections: winter, spring, summer, fall. From there it is divided into about ten menus per season. A sample menu, for example, would be...salad of two endives with pancetta and tiny croutons, papardelle with mushrooms, and chocolate shortbread with vanilla cream filling. Sounds good, right?

I couldn't wait to get it home and try the fresh ginger gingerbread with soft cream --even though it was 95 degrees out and certainly not the time to be browsing for recipes in the 'winter' section. Most of the ingredients and spices are things you will already have on hand. The only thing I didn't have was the buttermilk, which Wayne picked up for me.

The gingerbread came together like a standard cake mix. Beat the sugars and butter, add the eggs and ginger. The last step was adding the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk and molasses. Pour it into a loaf pan, and pop into the oven.

I had some leftover batter which I baked separately in little ramekins -- also fun and came out perfect, even better than the loaf I would argue -- it was easier to tell when they were done. The gingerbread was a beautiful rich dark gold in color and the smell was wonderful. Minutes after putting it in the oven, the scent of ginger and spices were running throughout the house.

The gingerbread was moist with a nice sort of crust on top (my favorite part). The fresh ginger added a burst of flavor on top of the cloves and cinnnamon. It was suprisingly light in texture, and the not-to-sweet soft cream was a perfect pairing. Can't wait to try more recipes from this book, this recipe is a keeper.

In some of the early entries on this site I didn't request permission to run the recipe I was writing about from the publisher so it won't appear here. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't.

From: The Vineyard Kitchen

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