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Nut Cakes
2 eggs 1/2 cup molasses 1/2 cup sugar 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking-powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 cup chopped nut-meats Beat the eggs slightly and add the molasses and sugar. Mix and sift the flour, baking-powder and salt, and stir them into the first mixture. Add melted butter and nuts, and half fill shallow greased molds with the mixture. Place a nut-meat in the center of each. Bake in a moderate oven (360-380 degrees F.) for twenty-five minutes.
A molasses-sweetened batter closer to a soft drop cake than a cookie, baked in small shallow tins. The book's own temperature range is unusually precise for its era, which makes this an easy one to place in a modern oven.
- Oven360-380F as printed sits between the usual "moderate" 350F and a slightly brisker heat. Set 375F and check at 20 minutes; molasses browns fast and the edges will darken before the centers set.
- Shallow greased moldsProbably gem pans or small patty tins rather than deep muffin cups. Mini-muffin tins or a shallow tartlet pan give a good proportion of crust to crumb; a standard 12-cup muffin tin will also work, at about the full twenty-five minutes the recipe gives.
- Half fill onlyNot caution but arithmetic. A teaspoon of baking powder in a single cup of flour, plus two eggs, gives a good lift, and filled tins may dome and spill.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and much darker than what the period recipe intends. Sorghum syrup is a reasonable substitute.
- Butter quantityOne tablespoon for a cup of flour is very lean by modern standards. The eggs and molasses carry the texture, so resist increasing it; more fat makes the batter greasy rather than tender.
- Nut meatsWalnuts or pecans are the likely intention. Toast them briefly before chopping to sharpen the flavor, and reserve whole halves for the tops.
- YieldRoughly a dozen standard muffin-sized cakes, or a good many more from mini tins; the batter runs only about two and a half cups, so treat any count as approximate. They should keep two or three days in a tin, molasses-sweetened cakes staying moist.
Molasses was still an everyday sweetener of American home baking well into the twentieth century, cheaper than refined sugar and valued for the moisture and keeping quality it gave small cakes. This recipe splits the difference, half molasses and half sugar. The instruction to bake in "shallow greased molds" points to the gem and patty pans that were common equipment in the period kitchen, and the single nut meat pressed into each center is the sort of small finishing touch used on cakes meant to be passed at tea.