Thursday, November 20, 2008

Comfort Food

How About Some Warm Ginger-Cake to Celebrate JUNETEENTH ?

In honor of Juneteenth 2001, National Public Radio (NPR) featured a commentary and recipe to stir bittersweet memories of how food played a role in the history of slavery.

Quoted from the website: http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/jun/010619.juneteenth.html

Culinary anthropologist Vertamae Grosvenor recalls how food--or lack of it--figured in slave life. "Imagine planting, harvesting, cooking, curing, canning, smelling, seving foods that were not for you," says Grosvenor. And then, thanks to Juneteenth, "Imagine freedom--after centuries of stirring the pot for others, you could do it for yourself."
In his autobiography Up From Slavery, educator Booker T. Washington recalls how, as a young slave, he had watched "two of my young mistresses and some lady visitors eating ginger-cakes... Those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things that I had ever seen; and I then and there resolved that if I ever got free, the height of my ambition" would be to eat such cakes.
Vertamae Grosvenor re-dedicated this previously created recipe to Booker T. Washington in honor of Juneteenth:
Booker T. Washington Ginger-Cake
½ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup molasses
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13 baking dish with butter.
Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Beat together until creamy. Stir in the molasses. Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger into a medium bowl. Divide the flour mixture into 3 batches. Beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
Pour the batter into the prepared dish. Bake until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into squares.
Makes one 9-by-13 inch cake; serves 10.
Reference:
Grosvenor, V. (2001). Juneteenth: The taste of freedom. Retrieved November 20, 2008, from the National Public Radio (NPR) website at http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/jun/010619.juneteenth.html.

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