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Card Gingerbread
1/3 cup butter 1 3/4 cups flour 1/3 cup brown sugar 1/2 tablespoon ginger 1 egg 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup molasses 1/2 teaspoon soda 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, egg well beaten, molasses, and flour mixed and sifted with ginger, salt, soda, and cinnamon. Chill, roll in sheets to one-fourth inch in thickness, bake on a buttered sheet, and cut in squares.
A rolled gingerbread baked as a single thin sheet and cut into squares while still warm — closer to a soft ginger cookie than a cake. The original gives no oven setting or time, so those are the two things to supply.
- OvenBake at 350F. A thin sheet of molasses dough scorches quickly at the edges; 10 to 12 minutes is usually enough, and the sheet should still give slightly in the centre when it comes out.
- Cut while warmThis is the hinge. Score and cut the squares within a minute or two of the sheet leaving the oven. Once it cools it turns brittle and shatters along whatever line it pleases.
- Chilling is not optionalThe dough is soft and greasy at room temperature. An hour in the refrigerator, wrapped, makes it roll to a quarter inch without tearing or needing extra flour.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than what was sold as ordinary molasses in this period. Treacle works if that is what is to hand.
- SodaThe half teaspoon of soda is there to react with the acid in the molasses; there is no baking powder in the formula and none is needed. Sift it thoroughly through the flour or the sheet will bake in mottled patches.
- The baking sheet"A buttered sheet" means a flat baking sheet, greased. Parchment does the job better and makes the transfer of a large thin slab far easier.
- RollingRoll directly onto the parchment or onto a floured cloth and slide it across. Lifting a quarter-inch sheet of chilled molasses dough by hand rarely ends well.
- YieldAbout two to three dozen two-inch squares, depending on how thin the dough is rolled; the sheet will not fill a half-sheet pan.
The name most likely refers to the finished shape rather than any ingredient: the sheet is baked flat and cut into stiff, thin pieces about as firm as a card. Rolled and cut gingerbreads of this kind are older than the soft cake gingerbread most people now picture, and firmer versions kept and travelled better than soft ones. Molasses, cheap and common in American kitchens of this era, does double duty here as sweetener and as the acid that sets off the soda.