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Favorite Chocolate Cake
One-half cupful of sugar, ½ cupful of molasses, ½ cupful of hot water, 1 1/2 cupfuls of flour, 1 teaspoonful of soda, 1 tablespoonful of butter, I square of chocolate, 3 eggs (one white left out).
Beat sugar, molasses, butter and eggs together, add the hot water with soda dissolved in it, the grated chocolate (melted) and flour. Bake in two layers.
A plain molasses-and-chocolate layer cake from the era when a single square of chocolate had to stretch a long way. It comes with no oven temperature, no baking time, and no filling, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- The flour quantity is unclearThe printed figure for flour cannot be read as a single sensible number. Judging by the sugar, molasses and liquid, something in the range of 2 to 2½ cups is what a batter of this type wants; start at 2 cups and add more only if the batter is thinner than a heavy pouring cream.
- Oven and timeNo oven heat or time is given. A moderate oven, about 350F, and 25 to 30 minutes for two 8-inch layers is a reasonable modern equivalent; bake until the centre springs back. Molasses browns fast, so check at 22 minutes.
- A square of chocolateThat means one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, not a square broken off a modern sweetened bar. Using sweet or semisweet chocolate will throw the sugar balance well off.
- Soda in hot waterThe soda is dissolved in the hot water so it meets the acidic molasses all at once. Dissolve it fully, add it to the batter, and get the pans into the oven promptly; the lift is chemical and does not wait.
- Grated then meltedGrating helped a hard block melt evenly. Chop it, melt it gently over hot water or in short bursts, and let it cool to barely warm before it goes in, or it will scramble the egg.
- The odd egg whiteThree eggs with one white omitted gives a slightly richer, more tender crumb. Reserve that white for a boiled icing if you want a filling; the recipe supplies none.
- YieldThe recipe says only 'two layers'; 8-inch pans are a reasonable choice. Butter and flour the pans well, or line the bases with parchment: molasses batters stick.
Molasses did the work of sugar in a great many American cakes well into the twentieth century, and books of low-cost recipes leaned on it hard. What is notable here is how little chocolate the cake contains: a single ounce, grated, in a batter for two layers. Chocolate was still a costly flavouring in the household economy books, and a cake could be called a chocolate cake on the strength of one square, with molasses supplying the dark colour and much of the depth that the chocolate could not. Oven heat and baking time are simply left out: the cook was assumed to know her own stove.