Pain DÉpices Bouchon Bakery French Gingerbread Loaf Recipes

PAIN D'ÉPICES: FRENCH GINGERBREAD CAKE

Steps:

• pour water, honey, sugar, add cinnamon sticks, star anise, and ground allspice in a saucepan. Bring to a boil while mixing. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover with a plastic film, and let infuse at room temperature for 24 hours.
• The next day, preheat the oven to 320 degrees F/160 degrees C. To make the dough, mix flour, corn starch, and baking powder in a bowl. Drain the syrup with a colander and discard spices. Add rum to the syrup and mix. Stir dry ingredients into the wet mixture and combine it with a hand whisk. Add whole prunes, dried apricots, dried cranberries, and slivered almonds to the mix and combine. Pour the preparation in a buttered nonstick loaf pan or a silicone loaf pan, filling up three quarters.
• Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes. Check the loaf readiness with a toothpick: if it comes out dry, gingerbread is ready. Remove the loaf from the bread pan and let it cool on a cooling rack.
• place speculoos cookies in a food processor and crush to get crumbs. Heat apricot jam in a microwave and spread it all over gingerbread using a silicone brush. Generously sprinkle the loaf's sides with crumbled speculoos cookies.
• Dip each dried fruit in a heated apricot jam, shake off the excess jam, arrange prunes, dried apricots, Medjool dates, and raisins on top, overlapping each other. Fill the gaps between fruit with crumbled cookies.

PAIN D'ÉPICES - SPICED FRENCH GINGERBREAD LOAF WITH HONEY

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 180C/360°F.
• Warm the milk and then add the honey, sugar and butter stirring well.
• Put the flour, baking powder, ground ginger and quatre -épices in a mixing bowl, make a well in the middle, break the egg into it, and add the milk mixture. Mix well (or just throw the whole lot into a food processor). Add the crystallised ginger and mix well once again.
• Pour into a well buttered 23-cm loaf tin and bake for 25 minutes. Lower the heat to 150C/300F and cook for a further 15 minutes. Remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.
• Store wrapped in clingfilm to keep it moist.