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Spice Cup Cakes
3/4 C shortening. 1 C brown sugar. 1 egg. 1 C molasses. 1 C hot water. Cream shortening. Add sugar and beaten egg. Combine molasses and hot water. Mix dry ingredients. Add alternately with liquid to first mixture. Bake in moderate oven. Makes 18 cup cakes. Mrs. M. Madole. 3 C flour, measured after sifting 1 t cinnamon 1 t ginger 1 t soda ¼ t salt Katherine Hafemann.
The method survives intact but the ingredient list has been mangled in transcription: only the flour, spices, soda and salt quantities made it onto the page, and a second contributor's name has been swept in at the end. What follows fills in the working assumptions a cook needs to get from this page to eighteen cakes.
- Missing quantitiesShortening, sugar, egg, molasses and hot water are all called for in the method but no amounts are printed. Any figure given here would be invention; a standard molasses spice cake of this flour weight runs roughly to a half cup fat, a half to three-quarters cup sugar, one egg, three-quarters cup molasses and three-quarters cup hot water, but treat that as a reconstruction rather than Mrs. Madole's recipe.
- "14 t salt"Almost certainly a fraction that lost its slash in typesetting — read it as 1/4 teaspoon. Fourteen teaspoons of salt against three cups of flour would be inedible.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F by the usual period reckoning. Cup cakes of this size need about 18 to 22 minutes; test with a pick in the centre rather than by colour, since molasses browns early and can read as done before the crumb has set.
- "Cup cakes" in a church bookThese are small plain cakes baked in gem or muffin tins. No frosting is called for.
- Soda and molassesThe teaspoon of soda is the only leavening, and it works by reacting with the acid in the molasses. If you substitute a neutral syrup or reduce the molasses sharply, the cakes will not rise and will taste faintly soapy.
- "Measured after sifting"Sift first, then spoon into the cup and level. Three cups measured this way is close to 12 to 13 ounces of flour; three cups scooped straight from the bag can run two to three ounces heavier and will give a dry, tight crumb.
- Alternating additionsAdd dry and liquid in three and two parts respectively, beginning and ending with flour, and stop mixing as soon as the last streaks disappear. Soda-raised batters lose lift the longer they sit, so get them into the tins and into the oven promptly.
- Two hands on one pageThe trailing "Katherine Hafemann" suggests a following recipe whose title and method were lost. Do not read her name as part of this ingredient list.
Molasses spice cakes were the workhorse baking of American church and grange cookbooks well into the mid-twentieth century: cheap, keeping well, and needing no more leavening than a spoonful of soda woken up by the syrup's acidity. Compiled books of this kind were often fundraisers, and the process by which they were assembled is exactly how a recipe loses half its ingredients and picks up a stray contributor's name. Its placement among the breads and muffins reflects an older understanding of the cup cake as a plain tinned cake for the lunch pail rather than the frosted item the word now brings to mind. The pairing of ginger and cinnamon with molasses is a standard economical spice profile of the period.