Old Fashioned Molasses Cake

October. The leaves again. The annual reminder that beauty and loss are the same event, viewed from different angles. I teach this every fall, using the leaves as a text — look, I tell my students, at what happens when something lets go. It becomes more vivid. More itself. The green was fine. The gold is transcendent. The letting go is the art.

I am thinking about retirement. Not actively planning — just thinking, the way you think about the weather: a background awareness of something approaching. Forty-three years is a career. Forty-three years is more than a career. It is an identity. Without teaching, who am I? I am a cook, a writer, a grandmother, a wife to a man who is disappearing. But the teacher — the teacher has been the spine of my identity since I was twenty-two years old, standing in front of a classroom for the first time with shaking hands and a copy of The Great Gatsby and the absolute conviction that I was going to change the world, one essay at a time.

I made apple cake. October apple cake, Mr. Bianchi's Cortlands from the North Shore orchard, Sylvia's recipe, dense with cinnamon. The cake went to school — the English department consumed it between periods, as always. Helen Marcowitz ate her piece and said, "If you ever retire, I will chain myself to your desk." I said, "Helen, I am considering it." She stopped chewing. "Considering what?" she said. "Retirement," I said. She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, "The apple cake will continue?" I said, "The apple cake will continue." She said, "Then I give you my conditional blessing." I love Helen. I will miss Helen. I am not ready to miss Helen yet. But the thinking has begun.

Marvin had a bad week. He wandered twice — not outside the house (the locks hold) but inside, from room to room, looking for something he could not name. The wandering is the disease expressing confusion in physical form: the body searching for the thing the mind has lost. I followed him. I always follow him now. He follows me; I follow him. We are two people in a house, orbiting each other, the gravity between us made of love and necessity and the forty-year habit of being in the same room.

The apple cake was perfect. The leaves are falling. October continues. The thinking about retirement continues. The following continues. Everything continues, slowly, beautifully, and with the particular sadness of a season that knows it is ending.

The apple cake I brought to school was Sylvia’s recipe — and while I can’t share that one (it belongs to her, the way certain things belong to certain people), what I can offer is the cake that lives beside it in my October rotation: this old fashioned molasses cake, dark and spiced and smelling of something irretrievably good, the kind of cake that makes a kitchen feel like a home even when the season outside is letting go of everything. It is the cake I make when I need to feel that something will continue. It always does.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup unsulphured molasses
1 cup hot water
Powdered sugar for dusting, optional

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9x13-inch baking pan, or line with parchment paper.
Combine dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and brown sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add eggs and molasses. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the molasses and mix until fully incorporated. The batter may look slightly curdled — this is normal.
Alternate wet and dry. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the hot water in two additions (flour—water—flour—water—flour). Mix just until combined after each addition; do not overmix.
Bake. Pour batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for 35–40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the edges begin to pull away from the pan.
Cool and serve. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before slicing. Dust with powdered sugar if desired. Serves well warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Old Fashioned Molasses Cake — The Cake That Continues No Matter What