• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

7. Slide the cake onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 2½ to 2¾ hours or until it begins to pull from the sides of the pan, feels springy to the touch, and a cake tester inserted midway between the central tube and the edge of the pan comes out clean.

8. Cool the cake in the upright pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Carefully loosen around the edge and central tube with a small, thin-blade spatula and invert on a wire rack.

9. Cool the cake to room temperature, then, before cutting, invert on a round plate so the cake is right side up. This cake needs no frosting. Note: If you don’t intend to serve the cake right away, wrap in plastic food wrap—or, if you prefer, in a bourbon-soaked cloth—and store in an airtight tin. That’s the Kentucky way.

MORAVIAN GINGERBREAD

MAKES A 13 × 9 × 2-INCH CAKE

This recipe is a downsized family version of the gingerbread served at Salem Tavern in Old Salem, a faithfully restored eighteenth-century Moravian town in North Carolina’s rolling Piedmont. What makes this gingerbread different is that the ginger is freshly chopped. I do the chopping in a food processor, a shortcut those efficiency-minded Moravians would have welcomed.

1¼ cups (2½ sticks) butter, slightly softened

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup molasses (not too dark)

½ cup finely chopped peeled fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of ground cloves

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

3½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 375° F. Grease and flour a 13 × 9 × 2-inch baking pan well. Tap out the excess flour and set the pan aside

2. Cream the butter in a large electric mixer bowl at moderate speed about 1 minute or until fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Now mix in the molasses, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

3. Combine the baking soda and vinegar and beat into the butter mixture. By hand add the flour alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour and stirring after each addition only enough to combine.

4. Spread the batter evenly in the pan and bake on the middle oven shelf for 45 to 50 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the middle of the gingerbread comes out clean.

5. Transfer the pan of gingerbread to a wire rack and cool to room temperature before serving.

6. Cut into squares and top, if you like, with drifts of whipped cream, scoops of vanilla ice cream, or, better yet, scoops of dulce de leche ice cream.

OLD VIRGINIA GINGERBREAD

MAKES 12 SERVINGS

This old family recipe was given to me by James Harrison of Coggins Point Farm on the south side of the James River. He was the father of my friend Maria Harrison Reuge, who, with her French husband, Guy, owns Mirabelle, a first-rate restaurant in the little Long Island town of St. James. Some years ago when I interviewed Mr. Harrison about old Virginia recipes, he told me that his father “always called this ‘molasses bread’ because he thought it tasted more like molasses than ginger.” What’s unique about this gingerbread is that it’s baked in custard cups, inverted on dessert plates, then topped with Brown Sugar Sauce (recipe follows).

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup molasses (not too dark)

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

1 cup loosely packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, separated

½ cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Spray twelve 8-ounce custard cups with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. Sift the flour, ginger, and cinnamon together onto a piece of wax paper and set aside also.

2. Combine the molasses and baking soda in a small bowl and let stand while you proceed with the recipe; it will fizz and foam. Cream the butter in a large electric mixer bowl at moderately high speed for 1 to 2 minutes or until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar, then, with the mixer running, add the egg yolks one by one.

3. By hand, fold the sifted dry