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Ginger Honty-Cake
1 cup of honey, 1/2 cup butter, or drippings, 1 tablespoonful boiled cider, in half a cup tablespoonful boiled cider, in half a cup of hot water (or 1/2 cup sour milk will do instead).
Warm these ingredients together, and then add 1 tablespoonful ginger and 1 teaspoonful soda sifted in with flour enough to make a soft batter. Bake in a flat pan.- Shalon Fowls. 1/2 cup of butter, 1/2 cup of boiling water, 1 cup of honey, 1 egg, 3 cups of flour, 3 cup of honey, 1 egg, 3 cups of flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of of ginger. Melt butter in the water, add the honey and beaten egg and the other ingredients. Bake forty minutes in a moderate oven.
Two versions of the same honey gingerbread sit here side by side: an older one leavened with soda and acid, and a later one using baking powder and an egg. Either bakes as a flat sheet cake rather than a loaf.
- Do not overheat the honeyWarm the butter, water and honey only until the fat melts. Honey scorches easily, and a batter mixed hot will begin to set the flour before the leavening has a chance to work.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. Forty minutes suits a batter about an inch deep; a honey cake browns faster than a sugar cake, so check at 30 minutes and tent with foil if the top is dark before the centre is set.
- Boiled ciderSweet cider boiled down to a thick, tart syrup, once a farmhouse staple and still sold by New England producers. Its purpose here is acid to react with the soda; the half cup of sour milk offered as a substitute does the same job, and buttermilk works in its place.
- DrippingsRendered beef or pork fat saved from roasting. It gives a savoury depth some people like in gingerbread, but butter or a neutral shortening is a direct swap by volume.
- SodaOne teaspoonful of baking soda, sifted with the flour so it disperses rather than streaking the crumb. In the first version the cider or sour milk supplies the acid to work with it; without any added acid the soda is more likely to leave a soapy taste.
- "Flour enough to make a soft batter"The second version's three cups is a good guide for the first as well. Aim for a batter that drops thickly from the spoon but still levels itself in the pan.
- Pan and yieldA 9x13 inch pan gives the flat cake intended and serves 12 to 15; a 9-inch square pan will work but needs closer to 45 minutes. Honey cakes improve after a day wrapped at room temperature.
Honey cakes belong to a long tradition of baking with the sweetener a household actually had on hand. Honey holds moisture and browns readily, which is why these cakes keep well and why they are so often paired with ginger and cinnamon, spices that stand up to a dark, sticky crumb. The first version uses the older method of soda woken by an acid, with boiled cider given first and sour milk allowed as a substitute; the second uses baking powder and an egg, the commercial convenience that spread through American home baking in the later nineteenth century. The first recipe carries a contributor's name, a habit familiar from community cookbooks.