Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful December and that January has treated you well!
With the start of the New Year I decided to start with the new Historical Food Fortnightly challenge for this year… the Holidays!
You’d think after all the holiday cooking that I would be sick of doing holiday dishes but I’ll let you in on a little secret… I did this recipe during the holidays. What was meant to be posted around Christmas got delayed by the cold plague that invaded our household towards the end of December. Put a bit of a damper on the holiday cheer. But, with this new Historical Food Fortnightly challenge, I was able to write a post after all, instead of waiting till next Christmas.
For this one I went very traditional… gingerbread.
I mean what is a more traditional Christmas cookie then that!
But I changed it up from a gingerbread cookie to something that is closer to a ginger cake. I found this particular recipe in “The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook”, for which I thank my husband since he got it for me as a Christmas present. And though this book is more of a modern rendition, it is still based on the recipes that Laura Ingalls Wilder collected and wrote down herself during her lifetime.
What I love more is that this recipe also comes with a little story told by her daughter Rose, which I feel makes this recipe even more special.
“I was ambitious to make it and my most vivid memory of it is my first one. My mother was not home; she had given me permission to make a gingerbread to celebrate something- perhaps her birthday or my father’s, a family affair. I was eleven or twelve years old. I was excited of course and nervous but I made the gingerbread carefully, measuring everything, and watched its baking. My mother often left me to watch the bread baking and it seems to me now that every time she did it I was lost in a book until my mother rushed into a house full of smoke and snatched cinders of loaves out of the oven. The gingerbread, however, baked perfectly, and I had just taken it out of the oven when the minister came to call. All the duties of hostess were mine unexpectedly, and I felt important. I welcomed the minister, seated him in the “front room”, spoke politely about the weather and such, then excused myself for a minute and returned with napkins, glasses of water, and three pieces of the hot gingerbread, proudly served. The minister was surprised and pleased. He looked slightly startled at first but ate a piece slowly. He declined a second and soon left. I ate none myself, saving it for the special supper this evening. I would not have cut it for anyone but such a caller as the minister. After supper, as its climax, my father, my mother, and I each took a piece of beautiful, soft, red-brown gingerbread, as tempting as any my mother had baked, a triumph for me. And it burned, it seemed to blister our tongues. I had used cayenne pepper by mistake, instead of ginger.”
I feel like anyone who is a cook or baker certainly has a memory like this one. Not me though…. right…..
Anyway, onto the recipe!
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Gingerbread
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup shortening
1 cup molasses
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup boiling water, measured in a 2-cup (or larger) measuring cup
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of each ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt
1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×9-inch baking pan.
2.) Blend the sugar and the shortening and mix in the molasses.
3.) Add the baking soda to the boiling water and mix well.
4.) Combine the flour and the spices and sift. Combine the sugar-molasses mixture with the flour mixture and the baking soda-water liquid. Mix ingredients well and pour into a prepared pan.
5.) Bake for 45 minutes or until cake tester inserted in the center of the gingerbread comes out clean.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook (1995)
With the ingredients collected, as shown above, I got ready to make the gingerbread!
On a side note, I realize now that I made a mistake with my seasonings. I accidentally left out the all spice. But I did have the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. At least there was no cayenne pepper!
First, using the wonders of modern technology, I beat together the shortening and brown sugar with an electric mixer till it was nice and fluffy.
I don’t normally use shortening but I kind of like the fact that there was no moment of panic when you realize you forgot to pull out the butter to soften before beating it. The shortening was ready right away!
Then I poured in the molasses…
… and mixed it all together. It actually came together quite smoothly and was already looking good!
While I was mixing up the molasses with the sugar and shortening, I also put a pan with the one cup of water on the stove to boil. So once the molasses was fully Incorporated the water was boiling away.
Now I had never really seen the instruction to put the baking soda into the boiling water, so I didn’t know exactly what would happen.
For those of you that are curious, this is what happened. Took me by surprise as well!
But, after a minute or so, it looked more like this.
I later read that this helps to not only activate the baking soda but also allows it to be distributed evenly through the dough/batter. Learn something everyday!
All that was left was to combine the flour and spices. I sifted the flour into the bowl and then used a whisk to combine the spices.
Why not sift it with the flour? You certainly can but I didn’t think of it, and when I did the sifter was already in the sink soaking and I didn’t feel like washing it.
Life of a lazy forgetful baker!
With the three different mixtures ready, I first combined the water and baking soda with the molasses/sugar/shortening mixture…
… and immediately regretted it!
Of all the things that I thought would happen, this was not one of them. At this point I panicked a little bit (ok, ALOT) not knowing if I spoiled the whole thing or not. But I decided to keep going, in the hopes that it would all come together in the end.
So in went the flour/spice mixture, a 1/3rd at a time…
… and when it was all mixed it actually looked alot better. And I mean ALOT! So the panic subsided a bit.
At this point I could see why this would need a 9×9-inch cake pan, because it was much more like a cake batter than a cookie batter.
So into the greased pan the batter went…
… and I smoothed it out with the spatula. After a few taps to get the air bubbles out, into the 350 degree oven it went for about 50 minutes (my oven runs a little low).
45ISH MINUTES LATER…
In a word… YUM!!!
The smell in my whole apartment was heavenly! It certainly helped boost our Christmas decor!
It was very hard to wait long enough to let it cool, but I decided that a cup of tea was in order, so it cooled while I made that.
Now I didn’t include this in the recipe above, but they recommend adding a dollop of whip cream to it. Seeing how I needed to make sure the recipe was as accurate as possible, it was necessary to add the whip cream to my slice of gingerbread. It was a heavy burden, but something I gladly did in the name of accuracy.
And the taste? Like a warm gingerbread hug!
The whip cream is a definite must to help contrast the warm spiciness of the moist cake. As a personal preference I think I would have used less clove and more ginger and cinnamon.
But, a wonderfully warm cake for any holiday party! Or just a snowy day with a cup of tea!