Home › Cookery › Molasses Cakes
Molasses Cakes
7 cupfuls of flour. 2 cupfuls of molasses. 1 cupful sugar. 1 cupful of butter. 1 cupful of sour milk. 1 even tablespoonful of soda. 2 tablespoonfuls of ginger.
Let the dough be as soft as you can conveniently handle it. Bake in a moderately quick oven.--Mrs. R. L.
A rolled molasses ginger cake in the old sense of "cake" — closer to a soft cookie than a layer cake. The original assumes you know the method, so the notes below fill in the mixing, shaping and timing.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, beat in the molasses, then add the flour alternately with the sour milk, with the soda and ginger sifted into the flour. Stop when the dough just holds together.
- "Moderately quick oven"Roughly 375-400F. Molasses and sugar at this proportion brown fast, so watch the edges rather than the clock.
- Thickness and timeRoll about 1/4 inch thick, cut in rounds, and bake 8-10 minutes on a lined sheet. They should still look slightly soft in the centre when you pull them; they firm as they cool.
- Sour milkPeriod sour milk was naturally clabbered and acidic. Use buttermilk, or a cup of milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice left to stand ten minutes. Modern refrigerated milk that has gone off is not a substitute.
- The sodaAn "even tablespoonful" is a level tablespoon, about three teaspoons. It sounds like a lot by the spoon, though spread across seven cups of flour it is modest, and it has two acids to work on here: the sour milk and the molasses. Sift it thoroughly through the flour or you risk bitter patches.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cane molasses, not blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter than a lighter table molasses of the sort this recipe seems to assume. Sorghum syrup also works and is regionally apt.
- "As soft as you can conveniently handle"This is the hinge of the recipe — a stiff dough gives hard, dry cakes. Mix it soft and sticky, then chill it an hour so it can be rolled without adding more flour.
- GingerTwo tablespoons of ground ginger is assertive by modern habit but correct for the style. If your jar has been open a year it will taste of nothing; buy fresh ground.
- YieldSeven cups of flour makes a very large batch, many dozens of 2-inch cakes. Halve it comfortably, or bake in stages -- the dough keeps several days wrapped in the refrigerator.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions credited on the title page to some 250 of Virginia's housewives, is full of recipes signed only with initials like this one — a record of what was actually being baked in particular households rather than what a professional cook thought should be. Molasses cakes belong to the broad family of American ginger cakes and gingerbreads that ran on molasses because it was cheap, kept well in the barrel, and carried its own acidity, which paired with soda and sour milk — a combination that stayed standard in home kitchens even after commercial baking powder became available. Recipes of this sort were often mixed in large quantities and kept in a tin or stone crock, where the molasses helped keep them soft; the large yield here suggests a kitchen baking for a household and its callers, not for a single evening.