Gingerbread and Orange Cream Cheese Heaven!

There have been a lot of birthdays at work recently! My friend does not like sweets which posed a challenge for me so I decided to make a Gingerbread Cake (in the spirit of the holidays) with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting (WOW!!!). I followed the exact time the recipe said to do it for, which I never do I always go a little less the first time, and it came out a little dry in my opinion. However, the birthday girl loved it and even non gingerbread fans really liked it so I call this a succesful recipe!! The recipe calls for a 9 in square pan but I used my rectangular pan and it was great!

I had some left over cream cheese frosting so I added that to this recipe and changed around the recipe a little bit. This is the Original recipe but here is what I did: I used 2 packages of Cream Cheese (plus my other left over cream cheese), roughly 2-3 tablespoons of butter, roughly 2 teaspoons of orange zest (I didn't measure it but zested roughly 1/2 an orange), 6 tablespoons of orange juice, and 2 1/2 C. of confectioners'sugar. This has to be one of the best frostings I have ever made! It was delicious and I don;'t think you can screw it up!




GINGERBREAD CAKE
(Source: allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup hot water


DIRECTIONS:

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Greased and flour one 9 inch square pan. I used a regular rectangular pan.
- Cream together the sugar and butter or margarine. Add egg, and beat well. Mix in the molasses.
- Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and clove. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture; add the hot water, and mix well.
- Pour batter into pan and bake for one hour. Allow to cool in pan and serve.