Home › Breads, Biscuits, Etc. › Sour Cream Gingerbread
Sour Cream Gingerbread
One cupful of sour cream, 1 cupful of molasses, ½ cupful brown sugar, 1 egg, 1 teaspoonful each of cinnamon and ginger, a scant 1/2 teaspoonful of cloves, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, ½ teaspoonful of soda sifted and dissolved in the cream, 1 scant teaspoonful of baking-powder, sifted with 4 cupfuls of flour. Bake in two shallow pans.
A plain molasses gingerbread leavened mostly by the reaction of soda with soured cream. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, which is typical of the period and the main gap to fill.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. In two shallow pans the layers are thin and will be done in 20 to 30 minutes; test with a skewer at 20.
- "Shallow pans"Two 8- or 9-inch square tins, or two 9-inch round cake pans, greased and floured. The batter is meant to spread thin and bake quickly rather than rise into a loaf.
- Sour creamThe book means cream that has soured naturally, which would have been thinner and more variable than what we buy now. Modern cultured sour cream is thicker; thin it with a tablespoon or two of milk or buttermilk so it will take up the soda evenly.
- The soda goes in the creamDissolving the soda in the sour cream before mixing is the hinge. It starts the reaction in the liquid so the gas is distributed through the batter; dumped in dry it leaves streaks and a soapy taste.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and less acidic, so it works less well with the soda. Grease the cup so the molasses pours out cleanly.
- Flour and consistencyFour cupfuls against two cups of liquid gives a stiff batter, closer to a soft dough. Since older flour was measured loosely, you may want to hold back a little of the last cupful and add it only until the batter drops thickly from the spoon.
- YieldTwo thin pans, cut into squares, serve about 16. It keeps better than butter cake and is at its best on the second day.
Sour cream and molasses gingerbread comes from the period when the acid in soured dairy did much of the work of leavening, the soda dissolved in the cream lifting the batter with a scant teaspoon of purchased baking powder alongside it. The ingredients are cheap ones: cream on the turn cost nothing to a family that had milk, molasses was among the cheapest sweeteners on the shelf, and a single egg stretches across two pans. Ginger, cinnamon and cloves were common in American kitchens, keeping well and going far. Gingerbread in this form is a cut-and-come-again cake rather than a dessert, and recipes of the period appear in many variants distinguished largely by the souring agent used.