An old-fashioned gingerbread loaf, mixed in one bowl and better on the second day than the first.
Gingerbread in this period means a dark, soft, molasses-heavy loaf, not a crisp spiced biscuit.
It is mixed in one bowl, needs no creaming and no particular skill, and it is better the day after it is baked. That combination made it the most frequently made cake in the Maritimes by a considerable margin. It was what you had in the house.
Serve it plain, still slightly warm, with butter melting into it. Anything more elaborate is missing the point.
Old-Fashioned Gingerbread Loaf
MAKES
One 9×5-inch loaf, 16 slices
OVEN
350°F / 175°C / gas 4
TIME
45 to 55 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- ¾ cup molasses
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup hot water
Method
- Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan and line the base with parchment. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.
- In a second bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and molasses together until smooth.
- Whisk in the eggs one at a time.
- Pour in the hot water and whisk to combine. The mixture will look alarmingly thin. It is meant to.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry and whisk just until no dry flour remains. Do not beat it.
- Pour into the prepared pan.
- Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until the top springs back when pressed lightly and a skewer comes out clean.
- Cool in the pan 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.
- Serve warm, or wrap once completely cold and leave until the following day.
Where the old-fashioned gingerbread loaf comes from
This is a one-bowl cake, and that is the whole reason it was made so often. There is no creaming, no folding, and no stage where the cook has to judge anything by eye. Wet into dry, stir, bake. A recipe that cannot be got wrong gets made on ordinary Tuesdays, and gingerbread was made on a great many ordinary Tuesdays.
It genuinely improves overnight, and for a specific reason. Molasses holds water and releases it slowly into the crumb around it, so a loaf that is faintly dry on the day it is baked is moist by the following morning. The spices also soften and blend, losing the sharp separate edges they have when first baked.
The hot water is not a filler. Poured into a batter carrying baking soda and a quantity of molasses, it starts the reaction immediately and produces a lighter, more open crumb than cold liquid would.
In a modern kitchen
Do not overmix. This is a batter that comes together in about fifteen seconds and beating it further develops gluten and toughens the loaf. Lumps the size of a pea will bake out.
Bake it the day before you want it. This is the only cake in the book that is meaningfully better on day two, and it holds that improvement for several days more.
If the top darkens before the middle is set, lay a sheet of foil loosely over it. Molasses browns fast.
How long it keeps
- Cool room: 5 days, wrapped. At its best on days two and three.
- Refrigerated: Not needed
- Frozen: Not needed, though it freezes well, whole or sliced, up to 3 months
Baking this for somebody else?
The Cottage Christmas Gift Kit covers the part no recipe does: how far ahead to make it, what survives a parcel, plus printable gift tags and tin labels. Free, four pages.
This recipe is one of forty-one in Christmas at Green Gables, which runs from the first cake of November through to the New Year. Everything on this site is written the same way it appears in the book.