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Molasses Layer Cake (No. 1)
1 egg (or yolks of 2) 1 cup molasses 1 tablespoon melted butter ½ cup boiling water 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon cloves 2 cups Five Roses flour.
Make 2 thick layers. Put together with any kind of jelly, and frost top. 4 eggs
A plain molasses cake of the old "one cup" type, with no separate leavening beyond soda reacting with the acid in the molasses. The Five Roses book assumed you knew what a layer cake was and left out the oven and the baking time entirely.
- The stray "4 eggs"The line "4 eggs" at the end appears to be a stray fragment carried over from an adjacent recipe; it has no place in this cake. Use one whole egg, or two yolks as offered.
- Soda and boiling waterStir the teaspoon of soda into the ½ cup boiling water and add it to the molasses mixture, then get the batter into the pans promptly. The soda is neutralising acid in the molasses, and much of the lift is spent within a few minutes of mixing.
- Oven and timeThe book gives neither an oven nor a time; bake in a moderate oven, around 350F. The recipe specifies two thick layers, so in 8-inch pans allow longer than the 20 to 25 minutes a thin layer would need. A tester in the centre should come out clean and the edges should just be pulling from the tin.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses or light treacle, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter and will flatten the cake's flavour.
- Salt and flourNo salt is listed; add 1/4 teaspoon. The 2 cups of flour is soft all-purpose, roughly 250 g if spooned into the cup and levelled.
- Batter consistencyThis makes a slack, pourable batter rather than a stiff one. Do not be tempted to add flour to thicken it; the water is what keeps a molasses cake from baking dry.
- Filling and frostingAny firm jelly works between the layers, though a tart one, currant or damson, holds up best against the spice. A plain boiled or brown-sugar icing on top is closer to period practice than buttercream.
- YieldOne two-layer 8-inch cake, 8 to 10 servings. It improves on the second day once the spice settles.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal and whose principal mill was at Keewatin, Ontario, and given away with sacks of its flour, which is why so many of its recipes name the brand by name. Cakes like this one belong to the long era when molasses was the cheap sweetener of Canadian and American kitchens and white sugar the expensive one, and when soda plus an acidic syrup was a complete leavening system in itself. The pairing of cinnamon and cloves with molasses is the standard spice signature of that tradition, shared with gingerbread, hermits and soft molasses cookies. That the book prints two numbered versions of a molasses layer cake, with neither an oven temperature nor a baking time, says a good deal about its intended reader: a woman baking daily in a wood or coal range she judged by hand, who needed the proportions and nothing else.