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Plain Ginger Cakes
1 cup N. O. molasses. 2 teaspoons soda. 1/3 cup Cottolene. 1/2 cup boiling water. 4 cups flour. 1 teaspoon salt. 1 tablespoon ginger. 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 1/4 teaspoon cloves.
PROCESS: Add soda to molasses. Melt Cottolene in boiling water; combine in mixing bowl. Mix and sift flour, salt and spices, add to first mixture and beat thoroughly. Chill dough and roll a small portion at a time to one-half inch thickness, shape with a round cutter. Press a seeded raisin in top of each, sprinkle with coarse granulated sugar. Bake in a moderate oven. It may be necessary to add more flour, as flour varies in thickening properties.
A rolled molasses cookie from a book written around one particular brand of shortening. Two things need attention before you start: the fat quantity, which looks like a misprint, and the oven, which the original never numbers.
- CottoleneA shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, made from cottonseed oil blended with beef suet, long since discontinued. Substitute an equal measure of vegetable shortening; lard gives a closer texture to the period original, butter will spread more and brown faster.
- The fat measurement is suspectThe fat measurement looks suspect -- 1½ cups of shortening against 4 cups of flour gives a very soft dough, hard to roll and cut even chilled. It may well be a misprint for ½ cup. Note that the recipe's own closing line allows for adding more flour, so some slackness was expected.
- N. O. molassesNew Orleans molasses: a light-to-medium cane molasses, not blackstrap. Use ordinary unsulphured molasses. Blackstrap will make the cakes bitter and heavy.
- Soda into molassesThe soda goes into the molasses first for a reason — the acid in cane molasses reacts with it immediately and the mixture foams up. Use a bowl with room, and move on to the flour before the fizz dies down.
- Moderate oven350°F. At half an inch thick these need roughly 10 to 14 minutes; they are done when the edges are set and the centres still look slightly soft, as they firm as they cool.
- Chilling is not optionalA molasses dough this soft will tear and stick at room temperature. An hour in the refrigerator, rolling one portion at a time and keeping the rest cold, is what makes the half-inch thickness workable.
- Coarse granulated sugarWhat we would now call sanding sugar or a coarse decorating sugar. Demerara works and adds a little colour.
- YieldWith a 2½-inch cutter, expect about three dozen thick cakes. They keep well in a tin and soften over a day or two.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913), compiled by Elizabeth O. Hiller, was published by the N. K. Fairbank Company, makers of Cottolene — which is why the firm's cottonseed-oil shortening turns up in place of butter or lard throughout the book. Cottolene, a blend of cottonseed oil and beef suet, was marketed hard from the 1890s onward as cleaner and more economical than lard, and cookbooks like this one were the advertising. The cake itself is older than the shortening: thick, soft rolled ginger cakes leavened with soda and cane molasses were a standing item in American home baking through the nineteenth century, cheap to make and long-keeping. The raisin pressed into the top and the coating of coarse sugar are the whole of the decoration, which tells you what sort of baking this was — everyday, made in quantity, and meant for a tin rather than a table.