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Dark Layer Cake (Eggless)
¾ cup brown sugar ½ cup molasses ½ cup warm water 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon soda 2 cups Five Roses flour.
Bake in 2 layers. Nut filling.
A lean, molasses-based layer cake from the era when eggs were expensive and butter was rationed by the household purse rather than the shop. The formula is terse even by 1915 standards, so most of the work is filling in what the book assumed every reader knew.
- The hinge: soda and molassesThere is no baking powder here. The single teaspoon of soda is neutralized by the acid in the molasses, and that reaction is all the lift the cake gets. Dissolve the soda in the half cup of warm water, stir it into the molasses mixture, add the flour, and get the pans into the oven promptly — waiting kills the rise.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Molasses cakes scorch easily because of the sugar, so a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading; hotter and the surface darkens before the centre sets. Two thin layers will take roughly 20 to 25 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Pans"Bake in 2 layers" means two round tins, greased and floured. Eight-inch pans suit this quantity; nine-inch will give you layers barely half an inch thick. Line the bases with parchment — a low-fat, high-sugar batter sticks.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat all-purpose flour milled by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, who published the book. Ordinary all-purpose flour is the direct substitute; 2 cups is about 250 g, spooned into the cup and levelled rather than scooped.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses or light treacle. Blackstrap was not the household standard and its bitterness will overwhelm the small amount of sugar and fat here.
- What is missingNo salt and no spice are listed. A quarter teaspoon of salt is worth adding; a teaspoon of ginger or cinnamon is a reasonable liberty, since this is a gingerbread in cake clothing. The single tablespoon of butter means a firm, close crumb, not a tender one — that is the recipe working as intended, not a fault.
- Nut fillingThe book expects you to turn to its filling section. Any cooked or boiled frosting with chopped walnuts folded in suits it; the cake is dry enough that a moist filling matters more than usual. Butter icing works but tastes anachronistic against the molasses.
- Yield and keepingOne two-layer eight-inch cake, eight to ten slices. Eggless molasses cakes keep better than butter cakes — wrapped, this improves on the second day as the molasses draws moisture back through the crumb.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed in enormous numbers to Canadian households, many of whom owned no other cookbook; the recipes were solicited from the company's own customers, which is why they read like notes passed between neighbours rather than tested instructions. Eggless cakes of this kind belong to a long tradition of thrift baking that predates the First World War but became far more prominent during it, when eggs, butter and white sugar were dear and molasses was the cheap sweetener still stocked in every pantry. The chemistry is older still: soda raised with the acid of molasses or sour milk was the standard North American leavening through much of the nineteenth century, and it survives in gingerbread long after baking powder took over everywhere else. Calling the result a "layer cake" rather than a gingerbread is largely a matter of ambition — split into two rounds and joined with a nut filling, a plain economical batter was dressed for company.