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Coffee Cake (One cup of butter one cup)
One cup of butter, one cup of sugar, one cup of molasses, one cup of coffee cold, one cup of currants, one teaspoonful of soda, one teaspoonful of mixed spices, two or four eggs, flour to thicken.
A one-bowl molasses fruit cake from the era when a recipe was a shopping list and the cook supplied the method. Two things are left to you: how much flour, and how to bake it.
- "Flour to thicken"With a cup each of butter, molasses and coffee to absorb, something in the region of 4 cups of flour will give a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pours. The quantity is a judgement call, so add it in stages and stop when the batter holds a soft mound; over-flouring gives a dry, tight crumb that molasses cannot rescue.
- The soda is doing real workA single teaspoon of soda is neutralising the acid in a full cup of molasses. Sift it with the flour or dissolve it in a spoonful of the cold coffee, and get the cake into the oven promptly once combined, since the lift begins as soon as the two meet.
- Cold coffeePlain brewed coffee, left to cool, is what is meant. It is here as the liquid and for its bitterness against the molasses, not for a strong coffee flavour; brewed strength is fine and instant will do.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in so they do not sink, and rinse and dry them if they are dusty or heavily clumped.
- Mixed spicesIn cookery of this period the phrase usually covered some combination of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, sometimes with allspice or mace. One teaspoon total is restrained; a teaspoon and a half suits modern palates against this much molasses.
- Two or four eggsThe choice changes the result: two gives a denser, more gingerbread-like cake, four a lighter and cakier one. Choose four if you want it to rise well with only the one teaspoon of soda.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven or timing at all; 350F works. In a greased and lined 9-inch tube pan or two loaf tins, allow about 50 to 60 minutes for loaves and up to 75 for a tube pan, testing with a skewer. Molasses browns fast, so tent with foil if the top darkens early.
- YieldRoughly 12 to 16 servings. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day as the spice settles.
In nineteenth-century American cookbooks the name "coffee cake" was often given to a cake with coffee in it, as here, rather than to the sweet yeasted breakfast bread that later took the name; that later sense is generally traced to German Kaffeekuchen, though the derivation is more often asserted than documented. Cold leftover coffee was a thrifty liquid in a kitchen where a pot was made each morning, and it sits well with molasses, a common everyday sweetener while refined white sugar remained the dearer article. The cup-of-each construction is characteristic of the period's community and charity cookbooks, where a rhythm of equal cups was easy to carry in the head. The absence of any baking instruction here assumes a reader who already knew her own stove.