My pre-Christmas Bake-a-thon and the Best Ever Gingerbread

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a fabulous day. We enjoyed a lovely relaxing Christmas at home which was perfect as there is no way the boys would have wanted to leave their brand new trampoline behind.

Did anyone else have a Christmas Eve bake-a-thon? I spent most of the day in the kitchen and then crashed in the afternoon before heading out for the evening. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy the baking and cooking (I wouldn't be here otherwise!) it's just the cleanup that gets me down. I am so grateful to have a dishwasher, we couldn't get by without it.

I was trying not to leave everything to the last minute but some things can really only be made the day before, and other things I sort of forgot about so ended up doing those too!

I know you are probably all totally over Christmas food but I wanted to post at least this one recipe so I can keep track and make it again next year (and probably before that too) because it was totally amazing.  

I didn't have much cooking to do this year but I did lots of sweet things.

On Christmas Eve I made 2 types of custard to take to my mother in laws house (the pudding was already prepped thank goodness). Then for our trifle I made a lemon and orange curd, a spelt genoise sponge, more custard and a mango and coconut jelly. Yum! I also made a double batch of this pumpkin gingerbread for our Christmas breakfast, a batch of my dairy-free rum balls and a batch of gingerbread men so the boys would have something yummy to leave for Santa. Whew!!

For me this gingerbread was the absolute highlight of my Christmas baking. It was everything you want in a gingerbread - packed with warm spicy flavour, incredibly moist and tasted even better the next day when you can't be bothered cooking anything. We had it Christmas morning with some homemade peach and chia jam.

While I think it would be more suited for our Christmas in July celebrations rather than a hot summertime Christmas, I would happily eat this any day and am glad to have half a loaf still stashed in the freezer.

Apologies for the less than stellar photo - cake for breakfast waits for no man! Had to snap one quickly and then get it on plates for the hungry horde. 

Best Ever Pumpkin Gingerbread 
Adapted from Simply Recipes

400g white spelt flour
1 1/2 ts bicarb soda
1 tbs ginger
1 tbs cinnamon
1/2 ts nutmeg
1 1/2 ts salt
2 cups pumpkin puree
225g melted butter
2/3 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup rice malt syrup
1/2 cup molasses
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 160 degrees C fan forced. Grease and line 2 loaf pans (mine were pyrex) and set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, bicarb, salt and spices.

In a separate large bowl or jug, whisk together the remaining ingredients until smooth.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold through until just combined.

Pour the mixture evenly into the prepared pans and bake for 45-60 minutes (mine was done at 45 minutes so start checking then). It is done when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Delicious served warm with butter but it's even more amazing the next day if you can wait that long.