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Soft Molasses Cake
1/2 cup shortening 2/3 cup brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup molasses 2 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 2/3 cup milk Cream shortening well. Add sugar slowly, beating continually; add beaten egg; beat well and add molasses; add half of flour, baking powder, salt and spices which have been sifted together; add milk and remainder of dry ingredients. Mix well. Bake in greased shallow pan in moderate oven about 40 minutes. Serve hot.
A plain molasses cake from a baking powder company's promotional booklet, and it behaves like one: fast to mix, best eaten warm from the pan. Two things need translating — the oven and the pan.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. The recipe says about 40 minutes; check from 35, since molasses browns early and can read as done before the centre is set.
- The pan"Greased shallow pan" means a single layer about 1 to 1 1/2 inches deep — an 8- or 9-inch square works, or an 11x7. In a deeper pan the batter needs longer and the crust dries out before the middle firms.
- ShorteningIn period usage this means a solid fat: lard, a vegetable shortening such as Crisco, or butter. Butter creams the same way. Do not substitute oil, which will not hold air during the creaming step.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap and not treacle. Blackstrap is markedly more bitter and will overwhelm the modest half teaspoon each of allspice and cinnamon.
- Three teaspoons of baking powderThat is a lot by current standards for two cups of flour. Modern double-acting powder works, and you can reduce to 2 teaspoons if you find the crumb coarse or catch a soapy note.
- FlourMeasure the two cups lightly: spoon the flour into the cup and level it rather than scooping, or the cake will be dry.
- MixingAdding dry and liquid alternately, dry first and dry last, is doing real work: it keeps the batter from splitting. Stop as soon as the flour disappears.
- Yield and servingAbout nine generous squares. "Serve hot" is meant literally — cut it in the pan and eat it warm, plain or with butter, whipped cream, or applesauce. It stiffens as it cools and is better reheated than served cold.
This likely comes from a Royal Baking Powder booklet, one of hundreds of branded cookbooks American food companies distributed free in the early twentieth century to teach cooks to use a specific product — hence the brand name written into the ingredient list. Soft molasses cake belongs to an older New England tradition of dark, spiced, molasses-sweetened cakes eaten warm as a supper or tea cake, a habit formed when molasses from the West Indies trade was far cheaper than refined sugar and remained the household sweetener long after sugar prices fell. The name is often said to distinguish it from the hard, keeping molasses cakes and gingerbreads of the same family; this one is soft, milk-rich, and meant to be eaten the day it is baked. The spicing is restrained compared with a gingerbread — no ginger at all — which puts the molasses itself in the foreground.