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Ginger Drop Cakes
1/2 cup butter 1 cup molasses 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon ginger 2 eggs 3/4 tablespoon soda 1/4 cup hot water Flour to make stiff batter Warm the butter slightly; beat it in the molasses; add the ginger, sugar and salt, then a little of the flour, then the beaten eggs, then more flour. Make the batter stiffer than needed to allow for the soda and hot water, which are to be added last. Drop on buttered tins and bake in a quick oven.
A molasses drop cookie of the old school, leavened entirely with soda reacting against the acid of the molasses. Two figures in the ingredient list need attention before you start.
- The soda quantityThe printed page was checked: the soda is 3/4 tablespoon, a little over two teaspoons, which is in line with molasses batters of this size. Dissolve it in the hot water and add it last, as directed.
- Flour to make stiff batterFor 1 cup molasses plus 1/2 cup each butter and sugar, expect somewhere around 3 to 3 1/2 cups flour. The dough should hold a soft peak on the spoon and spread only slightly on the sheet.
- Stiffer than you thinkThe instruction to make the batter stiffer than it needs to be matters. The 1/4 cup hot water goes in last and will loosen it considerably; a batter that looks right before the water is added will pool on the tin.
- A quick ovenIn period terms usually reckoned somewhere around 400 to 425F, which is hotter than a molasses cookie wants; the sugars scorch before the centre sets. 375F is where these behave, 8 to 10 minutes, until the tops are set and just cracking.
- MolassesUse ordinary unsulphured baking molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and will dominate the ginger.
- Buttered tinsMolasses doughs stick badly. Parchment does the job better than butter alone, and lets you slide the whole sheet off to cool, since these firm up as they cool and tear if moved hot.
- GingerA full tablespoon of ground ginger is assertive by modern standards but correct for the style. Ground ginger loses potency within a year, so an old jar will give you a much milder cake than intended.
- YieldAbout three dozen cakes dropped by rounded tablespoon.
Molasses was the everyday sweetener of American baking well into the twentieth century — cheaper than refined sugar, and conveniently acidic, so that a spoonful of soda alone would raise a batter without any need for baking powder or long beating. Ginger was likewise among the cheapest imported spices, which is why gingerbread and "ginger drop cakes" turn up in almost every household manual of the period as plain, keepable, undemanding fare rather than as anything festive.