I love everything about Ginger. I love the spice. I love Ginger Snap Cookies. I love making Gingerbread Houses. I love my friend Kim’s homemade Ginger Lemonade. I love saying the word. You get my drift. One of the desserts that I have on Christmas Day is Bobby Flay’s Gingerbread and Lemon Curd Trifle with Blackberry Sauce, it is hands down one of the most delicious desserts in the world. I’m weirdly loyal about tradition and I won’t make the trifle any other time of year. But I don’t want to wait 364 days for gingerbread cake so I decided to make a drunken gingerbread cake with SomruS infused vanilla pudding. SomruS is a cream liqueur that made its debut in 2014 to instant acclaim. The winner of numerous awards, this light and creamy liqueur is delicious straight up, on the rocks and when blended with scotch to make a SomruS Black. Caribbean rum is one of the many ingredients used to make SomruS and taking my cue from the classic rum and ginger ale cocktail, I hoped that SomruS infused vanilla pudding would be the perfect flavor complement to the gingerbread – and it was. SomruS is available in over 150 locations throughout Connecticut so you are sure to find it at your local wine & spirits store. Recipe follows, enjoy!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of sweet butter
1/4 cup of sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 & 1/4 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda (yes, again)
3/4 cup of boiling water
1 beaten egg

Directions:

Cream the butter and sugar. Sift together all the spices (I grate the spices fresh whenever possible), baking powder and flour. Using a whisk, beat 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda into the molasses (it will turn color and react) add this to the creamed butter/sugar. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to the boiling water and stir. Starting with the flour/spice mixture, alternate adding the flour/spice mixture with the boiling water and end with the flour mixture. Fold in a beaten egg. The batter will be very thin. Pour the batter into a greased and floured pan and bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

For the pudding – follow the directions of your favorite vanilla pudding mix, but substitute half the milk with SomruS. For example, the pudding mix I use calls for 2 cups of milk, so I used 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of SomruS. Once the pudding was cool, I used it between the layers of gingerbread and topped it with fresh whipped cream and grated nutmeg.

*This is a sponsored post, all opinions are my own.