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Ginger Drop-Cakes
Take three eggs, one cup lard, one of baking molasses, one of brown sugar, one large table-spoon ginger, one table-spoon soda dissolved in a cup of boiling water, five cups unsifted flour; drop table-spoons of this mixture into a slightly greased dripping-pan about three inches apart. - Mrs. L. McAllister.
A soft molasses drop cookie from the ginger-bread chapter of Buckeye Cookery, with no oven temperature or baking time given. The batter is slack, and how much flour you actually need is the variable that decides everything.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F for 10-13 minutes, until the tops are set and spring back lightly. These are cake-like drop cakes, not crisp snaps; pulling them while the centers still look soft keeps them tender.
- "Baking molasses"Probably an ordinary dark cooking molasses rather than blackstrap. Unsulphured dark molasses is the closest match; blackstrap will read bitter against only one cup of brown sugar.
- LardOne cup of lard is about 200 g. Leaf lard or a good rendered lard gives the softest crumb; unsalted butter or shortening substitutes cup for cup, though butter will spread a little more.
- Soda in boiling waterThe tablespoon of soda dissolved in boiling water is the hinge. It neutralizes the molasses acid and starts the lift immediately, so mix, drop and bake without letting the bowl sit. A level tablespoon is plenty; a heaping one leaves a soapy edge.
- FlourFive cups unsifted is roughly 600-650 g of modern all-purpose flour, which is more than most cooks will want. Add four cups first, then work in the fifth only until the batter holds a mound on the spoon.
- "Dripping-pan"A shallow rectangular roasting or baking pan. A modern rimmed sheet pan, greased lightly or lined with parchment, does the same job.
- YieldA very large batch: tablespoon portions of this much batter will give considerably more than four dozen cakes. Three inches apart is not excessive caution; the batter relaxes and spreads as the soda works.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) devotes a full section to ginger-bread. Drop-cakes like these sit between a cookie and a cake: no rolling, no cutting, no chilling, just spoonfuls onto the pan. The community-cookbook habit of crediting each contributor by name -- here Mrs. L. McAllister -- is one of the book's defining features, and it means the ginger-bread chapter is really a set of competing household versions of the same idea, differing mainly in how much soda and how stiff the batter.