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Ginger Cup Cake
3 eggs. 1 cupful molasses. 1 cupful sugar. 1 cupful butter (half lard will answer). 1/2 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in 1 tablespoonful buttermilk. 1 tablespoonful ground ginger. 2 1/2 cupfuls flour. Mix as other cake. Some like allspice.--Mrs. H.D.
A cup cake in this sense is a cake measured by cupfuls, not a cake baked in paper liners. The list is the whole method; "mix as other cake" assumes you already know the creaming order.
- The name"Cup cake" here means the old counting formula of butter, sugar, molasses and flour by the cupful, a cousin of pound cake. Bake it as a single loaf or square, not in muffin cups, unless you want to reduce the time sharply.
- Mix as other cakeCream the butter (and lard, if used) with the sugar until light, beat in the eggs one at a time, then the molasses, then the ginger and flour. Add the soda dissolved in buttermilk last and get it into the oven promptly, since the rise begins the moment acid meets alkali.
- Soda and buttermilkA single tablespoon of buttermilk is only a vehicle for dissolving the soda; the main acid in the batter is the molasses. Molasses varies a good deal in acidity from brand to brand, so the rise from half a teaspoon of soda may be modest.
- Molasses, not blackstrapUse ordinary dark or light cooking molasses. Blackstrap is bitter and much stronger-flavoured than what this recipe intends.
- Half lard will answerLard was the economy substitute and gives a slightly shorter, more tender crumb with less flavour. All butter is the better version; if you use lard, choose leaf lard rather than the hydrogenated block kind.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. As a modern equivalent, 350F suits it: in a greased and floured 9-inch square or a 9x5 loaf, expect roughly 35 to 45 minutes for the square and 50 to 60 for the loaf, tested with a skewer.
- Ginger and allspiceA tablespoon of ground ginger is assertive by modern standards and appropriate here. If following the note about allspice, half a teaspoon is enough alongside it.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 servings. The cake keeps well and improves on the second day as the molasses draws moisture back through the crumb.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from some 250 Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries end with a set of initials rather than a name. Molasses gingerbreads and ginger cup cakes were staples of the American household baking repertoire through the nineteenth century, when molasses was cheaper than refined sugar and ground ginger was one of the few spices a rural kitchen could reliably keep on hand. The pairing of soda with an acid liquid was by then well established in domestic practice, saleratus having been in common use since the 1840s before bicarbonate of soda became widely available; recipes of this period often dissolve the soda in a spoonful of buttermilk. The offhand "mix as other cake" is a reminder that these books were written for cooks who already knew the motions and needed only the proportions.