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Dessert sauce for gingerbread

I am making some gingerbread for a friend for a bridge party she is hosting and wanted to serve it with some kind of sauce or topping. I'm not really a gingerbread person so not sure what tastes good with it, but it seemed Fall-ish. Would caramel be good? Maybe a dollop of whipped cream on top of that dusted with some nutmeg? Thanks for any ideas!

16 Comments:

Normally I would head for a recipe to answer your question, but since I happen to be in a bad (pissy) mood, I have to head straight to the instant gratification stuff.

Which I can't find of course.

My SIL had given me what I THOUGHT was a Barefoot Contessa Caramel-Chardonnay sauce last year, and I still get sensuous chills thinking about it (but I can't find it online to confirm). It was velvety, buttery, but not too sweet - I guess the bit of chardonnay was just enough acid to cut down the sweetness.

So long story short, YES, caramel would be appropriate, as well as any kind of rum-based sauce. Whipped cream is overrated. Maybe a rum & roasted pineapple sauce, or lemon & cranberry (lookie here, I start thinking about food, and my mood improves! Thx thegourmetgal for inadvertently cheering me up!)

I love gingerbread! Caramel sauce is too heavy a sauce for a heavy cake like gingerbread. I like it with creme anglaise or else just plain whipped cream - the real stuff - not "whipped topping," Lemon sauce is also an option although it's not my thing.

Thanks @finewinendine & @tapioca! Everything I saw when I did a search was all about lemon sauce, so I guess that is a popular pairing--although I would never have thought to put those two together.

Caramel would be perfect! But as tapioca said it can be heavy, so I would also serve it with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream to help balance it. The combination of gingerbread, vanilla and caramel is wonderful ... I might have to make some this weekend!

Oooh. For me I like a whiskey and butter sauce or a pear glaze on some types of gingerbread.
Whipped cream is also always an awesome choice.
Any creamy but not too sweet custard or cream anglaise (as was suggested) or a hard sauce like the type used for plum puddings.

Yum.

I agree with the heavy cream/creme anglaise ideas. Something sweet will help balance the ginger. I'm also a fan of citrus hints in a creme anglaise (lemon zest) or lime icing on my ginger cookies (lime juice and powdered sugar) but that might not be something everyone likes...

Hard sauce, sometimes called brandy butter or rum butter, is traditional with heavy cakes like gingerbread, date nut cake, fruitcake and plum pudding. The sauce isn't a really a sauce--it's a sweetened, shaped butter that's served on top or next to a serving of cake, not spread or poured like frosting.

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 Tbsp. brandy, rum or other alcohol, or 1 Tbsp. lemon or orange juice
1 tsp. grated lemon or orange peel

Beat all ingredients together in a medium bowl. Use a very small ice cream scoop to form balls, place on a waxed paper- or parchment-lined baking sheet and refrigerate; you can also spread the sauce into small candy molds and refrigerate or freeze--pop out of molds about a half hour before serving. Garnish with mint, cloves, or citrus peel strips.

You can use granulated sugar instead of powdered, but it might still be grainy even with a lot of whipping. Ditto for brown sugar, but it makes a nice autumn-ish colored sauce with a to make a darker hard sauce with a richer, more complex flavor like molasses.

Next to the recipe in my notebook are the letters "BA" which I think means I copied it from Bon Appetit.

betteirene--that sounds awesome! I bet it tastes good AND makes a nice presentation. . . . think I will try it. Thank you so much!

Here's something different. It's probaby not what you're looking for, but i'm going to throw it out anyway. LOL My mother used to slice bananas over a pan of barely warm gingerbread and then she'd pour frosting over that. Melted butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk. She'd make it kinda soupy and pour it over the bananas. OMG

Whipped cream with a hint of orange .... a few drops Boyaijan Orange Oil is perfect ...

This will also help warm you up if you're cold.... The bourbon that is... sans the other ingredients...

Bourbon Sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup Light corn syrup Karo
1/8 cup butter
1/4 cup bourbon

In a small pan, Teflon coated pan preferably, combine the sugar, corn syrup and butter over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, cook 1 minute stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the bourbon. Serve the Gingerbread warm with the bourbon sauce topping.

Bird's Custard from the canister. Yeah, that's right.

Or a creme anglais like others have suggested.

cool whip! sandra lee told me so! ha!

I would stick with a classic vanilla sauce so the gingerbread flavor can shine through. Maybe add a modest pinch of fresh nutmeg, but nothing more.

-Dawn

@ag3208--what is Bird's Custard??? I don't think we have that here. Is it like Eagle Brand milk (sweetened condensed milk) ?

Ohhh, Pavlov, thank you very much. I think this bourbon sauce is the something I've been looking for. I've been trying to develop an adult ice cream parfait--man, am I gonna have fun playing with this!

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