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Molasses Cake (Eggless)
2 cups molasses 1 cup lard 2 teaspoons soda dissolved in 1 cup hot water 4 cups Five Roses flour Flavor Pinch of salt.
This is an ingredient list rather than a method — typical of the shorter entries in the Five Roses book, which assumed the reader already knew how a cake went together. The proportions work, but a few decisions are left to you.
- The hinge: add the soda water lastCream the lard with the molasses, stir in the flour and salt, then pour in the hot water with the dissolved soda and mix quickly. Soda plus the acid in molasses starts working immediately, so the batter goes into the pan and into the oven without delay.
- "Flavor"An instruction to season to taste. For a molasses cake of this period that means about 2 teaspoons ground ginger, or a mix of ginger, cinnamon and cloves; a teaspoon of vanilla also fits. Without it the cake tastes flatly of molasses.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and much less sweet. There is no other sugar in the recipe, so the molasses is carrying the whole load.
- LardOne cup is about 200 g. Modern shortening or softened butter substitutes directly, though butter browns the crumb faster and the cake will be less tender.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat household flour, close to modern all-purpose. Four cups is roughly 500 g; measure it lightly spooned rather than packed or the batter will be stiff.
- SodaTwo teaspoons of baking soda in this volume of acidic molasses is in range, but level the spoons. Excess soda gives a soapy taste and a dark, coarse crumb.
- Pan and ovenThis makes a large batter, enough for a 9-by-13-inch pan or two loaf tins. The recipe gives no oven direction at all; a moderate oven of about 325-350F for 40 to 50 minutes for the sheet, a little longer for loaves, until a skewer comes out clean.
- KeepingMolasses cakes are generally better on the second day; wrap tightly once cool. The sugar in molasses holds moisture, and eggless cakes of this type tend to keep for several days.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and offered to buyers of its flour, which is why so many of the recipes in it name the brand. Eggless cakes appear throughout books of this kind because eggs were seasonal and expensive on Canadian farms in late winter, when hens slowed their laying — and because molasses, which is acidic, reacts with baking soda to raise a batter perfectly well without them. Molasses itself was a staple sweetener across eastern Canada and the Maritimes long after refined sugar became common, arriving in barrels from the West Indies on the same trade routes that carried salt cod out; a cake built on two cups of it is a thoroughly regional document, not merely a thrifty one.