Taking Tea with Miss Austen Mouse: Gingerbread Cakes

by Cassandra Bates, Region Treasurer

With our Spring Tea quickly approaching, I felt that it was a good time to take tea with Miss Austen Mouse. You see, Miss Austen Mouse is somewhat of a connoisseur when it comes to Regency Gastronomy and absolutely loves sharing when she discovers a “new” Regency recipe.  Since we were taking tea together, she decided to share a recipe for Gingerbread Cakes from The Art of Cookery: Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, originally published in 1805:

Take three pounds of flour, one pound of sugar, one pound of butter rubbed in a very find, two ounces of ginger beat fine, a large nutmeg grated then take a pound a treacle, a quarter of a pint of cream, make them warm together, and make up the bread stiff, roll it out, and make it up into thin cakes, cut them out with a tea-cup, or small glass, or roll them round like nuts, and bake them on tin-plates in a slack oven. 

Now, I am not sure about you dear reader, but I did not find that recipe to be plain nor simple. Luckily, my dear friend Miss Austen Mouse was able to modernize the recipe for me:

1 ½ lbs. all-purpose unbleached flour

½ lb. sugar

½ lb. butter softened to room temperature

2 tbsp. ground ginger

1 tbsp. ground nutmeg

1 cup molasses

¼ cup cream

1. Preheat oven to 375°
2. In a large mixing bowl, blend the flour, sugar and spices thoroughly with your hands.
3. Warm the molasses and cream together in a small saucepan, stirring to blend. This is not to be hot but warm so that they blend together, not cook.
4. Work the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until it has a sort of grated bread look.
5. Add the molasses and cream mixture and work it up into a stiff dough with your hands. If it seems dry, add a little more cream to it. The dough should be stiff but not dry.
6. Roll out the dough on a floured surface about ¼ inch thick and cut cookies into whatever shapes please you. If you wish to form them into nut shapes as the recipe states they will look sort of button shaped when they bake.
7. Bake these in a 375° oven for about 8 to 10 minutes. They should still be soft to the touch before they come from the oven, not hard.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more Regency Gourmandise and other adventures with Miss Austen Mouse!

If you have a request for Miss Austen Mouse, please email: jasnaewanid@gmail.com or post on our Facebook page or Twitter feed.  Want to snag your very own tea cozy like the one pictured here? Hop on over to BerindeensTeaTime on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BernideensTeaTime?ref=profile_header