Favorite Old Fashioned Gingerbread

Welcome December!!! Now with Thanksgiving behind us, we have Christmas to concentrate on and all the great foods (especially cookies) that Christmas brings. I absolutely love baking Christmas cookies and cut out sugar cookies are my favorites. As soon as I make some I will definitely post them. But for now let's start the season with some gingerbread. I don't know why I haven't made this before. It is just so easy and absolutely delicious! It definitely reminds me of the holidays. This is a very moist gingerbread. The recipe comes from allrecipes. I have found lots of good recipes on there lately.

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 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 inch square pan. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the egg, and mix in the molasses. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Blend into the creamed mixture. Stir in the hot water. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake 1 hour (mine baked 45 minutes and was done) in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan before serving.