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Sour Milk Gingerbread
1 cup molasses 1 3/4 teaspoons soda 1 cup sour milk 2 teaspoons ginger 2 1/3 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup melted butter Mix soda with sour milk and add to molasses. Sift together remaining dry ingredients, combine mixtures, add butter, and beat vigorously. Pour into a buttered shallow pan, and bake twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven.
A plain molasses gingerbread of the sour-milk type, where the acid in the milk and the molasses both work on the soda. It comes together in one bowl and wants a hot oven and a quick hand.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F (period "moderate" runs about 350-375F). Twenty-five minutes suits a shallow pan; a deeper 8-inch square will likely need 30-35 minutes, until the center springs back.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, not spoiled pasteurized milk. Use full-fat buttermilk, or stir 1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- The soda1 3/4 teaspoons is generous for this quantity of batter, and it depends on both the buttermilk and the molasses for acid. If your molasses is a mild or sulphur-free table syrup rather than a dark one, cut the soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons or the crumb will taste soapy and darken unpleasantly.
- MolassesUnsulphured dark molasses is the right character here. Blackstrap is too bitter and too low in sugar for a cake this plain.
- Work fastThe soda begins reacting the moment it meets the sour milk and molasses. Have the pan buttered and the oven at temperature before you combine the two mixtures, and get it in the oven directly after beating.
- Pan and yieldA shallow pan means about 8 by 8 inches or a 9-inch round, roughly an inch of batter. It gives nine to twelve squares.
- ServingBest warm, cut in squares, with butter or whipped cream. Wrapped, it should keep two or three days, and many bakers find the ginger more pronounced the next day.