ginger up!

right now in the oven are yesterday's pumpkin cinnamon rolls. im warming them up to devour. my mother-in-law gave us some puree for soup (there's not a lot of pumpkin creativity here--it's soup or soup. boggles the mind. i'm all, people! this is a PUMPKIN! do you know what you can do with a pumpkin?!), and while i do adore a lovely pumpkin soup (the mister made a delightful soup with potato and parsley), i also had some fun with the orangey goo. i made pumpkin macaroni and cheese, the afore mentioned cinnamon rolls, and a sponge cake with ginger cream.

because ginger is glorious. first, i made a simple syrup--one cup water, one cup sugar--and then i added huge chunks of ginger.

i let that cook for a long time.



the flavour was sharp and gingerlicious.

the cake itself was based on what i've done before, but i wanted to be sure i got the ratio right. adding chocolate is one thing. adding pumpkin is another. i found a recipe that suited my needs and the only thing i changed was adding less sugar.

for the filling, i whipped 2.5 dl of cream, and slowly poured in a few glugs of my ginger syrup.

then the mister and i ate some ginger chunks. it was an important part of the process!

the cake was almost pumpkin pie-ish, with the added texture of the hazelnuts. delicious!  everyone enjoyed it.

but oh! my stars! i still had syrup left over! and pumpkin!!

what's a girl to do but keep on baking. the next morning, i was on a cinnamon roll mission.

brown sugar doesnt exist here, so i used some sucre complet de canne i found in france.

 i added some orange juice to the syrup and boiled it down.


when the rolls came out, i poured the glaze over them... and lo we had a fabulous breakfast

and a bonus: orange ginger candy