‘Tis The Season For Gingerbread Toas-Tites

With Christmas trees, stockings, and eggnog all around, Boy and I are getting in the holiday mood.  We’ve been watching all our favorite Christmas movies (White Christmas, Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Carol, Scrooged) and listening to some solid Christmas tunes (like the very excellent 1996 Nordstrom holiday collection – yes indeed, I’ve been listening to that CD for 14 years strong).  So of course, we had to do some Christmas Toas-Tites!

We’ll kick it off with dessert first.

All-Around Gingerbread Toas-Tite

Ingredients:

• Gingerbread cookies, partially baked
• Gingerbread cake
• Non-stick cooking spray
• Any decorations you like (frosting, sprinkles, you name it)

For this Toas-Tite, we used two recipes for Gingerbread Men and Gingerbread Cake, both from Joy of Baking.  But if you have your own favorite recipes, use those!  And take a peek at the Notes from the Kitchen for our thoughts on these two recipes.

Directions:

1. Prepare your gingerbread cake.  Cut out a circle of cake for your filling.
   
   Boy and I used a biscuit cutter approximately 2 inches in diameter to punch out a hole in our cake.  We also shortened our round of two-inch high cake by cutting the round in half.  This kept the cake from getting super compact inside the Toas-Tite but if you want a more dense dessert, pack it in!]
    
2. Prepare your gingerbread cookies.
    

   Boy and I rolled out our dough to approximately 1/4-inch thick and then used a very large martini glass to cut out two large circular cookies.  The most important thing here is to make sure your cookies are larger than the Toas-Tite clamshells.  We also pulled our cookies out of the oven about 3 minutes shy of being fully baked so that they would be a bit more malleable and have a better chance of sealing together.  But take care!  It’s a balancing act to make sure the cookies are baked enough so they don’t fall apart when you pull them off the cookie sheet, and not so cooked that they are too crispy to Toas-Tite properly.
    

3. Now it’s time to put it all together!  Spray a bit of non-stick cooking spray into the Toas-Tite clamshells (we used canola oil).  Then place your cookies onto the Toas-Tite (we opted for putting the top of the cookie toward the clamshell so have the prettier side out and the slightly softer underside of the cookie in to help make the seal).
   
   As you can see in the picture above, one of our cookies actually split as we flipped it over into the Toas-Tite.  Luckily, they were soft enough so we could just overlap the cookie pieces and it fused back together in the Toas-Tite.
    
4. On top of one cookie, place your round of gingerbread cake.  Carefully seal the Toas-Tite and trim the excess cookie.
    
   As you can see in the picture above, one of our cookies actually split as we flipped it over into the Toas-Tite.  Luckily, they were soft enough so we could just overlap the cookie pieces and it fused back together in the Toas-Tite.
    
5. Toast it up!
    
6. Remove the Gingerbread Toas-Tite from the sandwich maker, let cool, and decorate to your heart’s content.

Notes from the Kitchen

If you like gingerbread, this Toas-Tite is for you.  I think it’s also noteworthy to say that before this Toas-Tite, Boy said he did not enjoy gingerbread cookies.  That said, he ate his half Toas-Tite with gusto.  We were pleasantly surprised with the Joy of Baking recipes.  We had never made them before but they turned out very well.  Not too sweet, the cake was quite moist, and the ginger / molasses flavor wasn’t overly intense.

We were also amazed at how moist the entire Toas-Tite stayed.  The cookies actually didn’t get overly crunchy (they were actually quite soft except for that nice crisp sealed edge) and the cake stayed very moist.  The layers and the slightly different flavor of the cookies and the cake made for a great holiday dessert.  This one will definitely make my permanent holiday recipe collection.

By Girl