Bread Crumb Molasses Cake

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PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
The finished bread crumb molasses cake, with slide ready for devouring.

Back in 1936 in the middle of the Great Depression, a great many folks found it extremely difficult to put their hands on such natural edibles as eggs and milk, let alone the overpriced, refined, store-bought, hardly-nourishing-at-all, processed foods that far too many people consume far too much of these days.

The Depression was a time, in short, when inventive cooks out of necessity discovered a tremendous number of ways to stretch a very few inexpensive, “down-home” ingredients into nutritious, economical, and mouthwatering “works of art” that you just can’t hardly find anymore.

I recently discovered the formula for one of these treasures while rummaging around in the back of my grandmother’s cupboard: a terrific recipe for Bread Crumb Molasses Cake. The Detroit Free Press originally published it in ’36, and it’s both much tastier and much more healthful than the dead, chemical-laced, prepared desserts sold down in the local supermarket. Besides that, it uses hardly any ingredients at all … and the few it does call for will cost you practically nothing!

First, put three tablespoons of bacon fat (butter will work too, if you prefer) into a bowl and melt the shortening by pouring three-quarters of a cup of boiling water over it. Next stir one teaspoon of baking soda into one cup of molasses and pour the molasses in with the water/shortening. Then add three-fourths of a cup of dried bread crumbs (I use whole wheat) and one-half cup of raisins. Finally, dump in one cup of whole wheat flour, three-fourths teaspoon of salt, and two teaspoons of powdered ginger. (I also like to add one-fourth cup of wheat germ, even though it wasn’t called for in the original recipe.)

Mix everything together well and bake the batter in a lightly greased loaf pan at 325°F for about forty minutes (or for thirty minutes at the same temperature if you use a layer cake pan). The old “clean knife trick”—when a knife stuck in the baking cake pulls out clean, the cake is done—will tell you exactly when to take this delicious treat out of the oven, if you have any further questions about timing.

  • Published on Sep 1, 1978
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