Gingerbread Chai Snickerdoodle Pound Cake

I’m obviously on a mission to guarantee your kitchen and home smells like a million-billion-zillion bucks .. aka the holiday season!!

Could there BE anything more Christmas-y that cinnamon and gingerbread smells?!?!

 

Our tree goes up this weekend!! I can’t wait, I always loved putting up the tree growing up, but it’s a little bit more special now that it’s just Mr. LTSL and I. It genuinely is OUR tree, and as you look at it, you can definitely see our personality shining through. Our decorations range from places we’ve traveled to together, shiny gold blubs, tons of homemade knickknack’s and guarding it all, just at the tippy top sits batman ready to fight off any prying Grinch … and right next to him, a cupcake of course. Randomness, at its best.

I’m sure there will be Christmas carols playing, and I’ll be baking up a storm!! And there will be wine … possibly, probably, mulled. Annnnd with all of that hard work of rocking around the Christmas tree… we’ll need cake!!

 

Gingerbread Chai Snickerdoodle Pound Cake

Ingredients:

4 eggs, room temperature

2 cups sugar + 2 tablespoons ( separated)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 tablespoon  dark molasses

2 all-purpose flour

1/4 cup cake flour

21/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground ginger powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder + 1 tablespoon ( separated)

1/2 tsp fresh nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground clove

1-1/4 cups milk

4 Chai Spice Tea bags

2/3 cups butter

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, beat eggs. Slowly add 2 cups sugar, until mixture is light and fluffy. Add almond and molasses.

Sift together flours, baking powder, ginger powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg and ground clove. Slowly add to batter.

In a small saucepan, heat milk and chai tea – you want to begin to see small bubbles forming and the tea extracting. Do not boil.

Once simmering, remove tea bags and add butter. Allow it to melt.

Slowly ( and carefully) add hot mixture to the batter. Stir just until combined

Pour into a greased baking pan. Bake at 350° for 60 minutes.

While the cake is baking, combine remaining 1 table spoon of cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl.

Once the cake is finished, remove from oven and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar topping.

Allow to cool completely, and slice.

Cool on a wire rack.

Pour me a glass , and start blasting the Christmas carols….  it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!