Roxbury Cakes
3 1/2 cups pastry flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup raisins 1/2 cup milk 1 3/4 cups flour 1/2 cup molasses Nutmeg 1/2 cup English walnut meats 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon soda Cream the butter, add the sugar gradually, then the molasses and milk. Mix, and sift the dry ingredients, and add to the first mixture. Add lastly the raisins chopped fine, and bake in gem pans. This should make about twenty small cakes. Ice with chocolate icing, putting just a little of the icing in the center of each cake, and an English walnut meat pressed down upon that.
A spiced molasses gem, printed with a column of ingredients that has clearly been jumbled in typesetting. Read the flour line first before you start creaming butter.
- On the flourThe printed page was checked and the flour reads 3 1/2 cups of pastry flour, as our text now gives. With only 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup molasses, the mixture comes together very stiff, so add milk a spoonful at a time until it drops thickly from the spoon before filling the gem pans.
- Gem pansGem pans are muffin pans, usually cast iron but sometimes tinned sheet metal, with rounded or oval cups often a little smaller than a modern standard muffin tin. A 12-cup tin filled two-thirds will give you cakes of about the right size; twenty small cakes means two batches or a mini-muffin pan.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range cook's judgment. Molasses batters scorch, so use a moderate oven, 350F, for 18 to 22 minutes; test with a pick at the center.
- Soda and baking powder togetherThe soda works on the acid in the molasses, neutralising it and giving off gas of its own, while the baking powder supplies dependable lift. Sift both through the flour rather than adding them to the wet mixture, and get the pans into the oven promptly once combined.
- Nutmeg unmeasured"Nutmeg" with no quantity was generally left to the cook, meaning a few gratings. A quarter teaspoon freshly grated sits reasonably against the teaspoon of cinnamon and half teaspoon of cloves.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer than all-purpose, around 8 to 9 percent protein. If you have none, use all-purpose with about 2 tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, or accept a slightly tougher crumb.
- Raisins and walnutsThe raisins go in chopped fine so they distribute through a stiff batter rather than sinking. The half cup of walnut meats is not folded in at all in the written method; it is for the whole nut pressed into the icing on each cake, so reserve twenty good halves.
- IcingA dab of chocolate icing in the center of each cake, not a full covering. Any simple confectioners' sugar and cocoa icing, stiff enough to hold a nut without spreading, does the job.
- Yield and keepingAbout twenty small cakes. Molasses and butter keep them moist for three or four days in a tin, and the spice improves overnight.
Roxbury was an independent town until it was annexed by Boston in 1868, and the Roxbury Russet apple is the best-known thing to carry the name. Cakes like this one are Boston baking in miniature: molasses rather than a full measure of sugar, warm spice, raisins, and a wallop of walnut on top.