Mrs. O'Rourke's gingerbread recipe

"Estate of Mind" opened Saturday night at Future Studio -- we had a good crowd and the art was well received. In addition to the art on the wall, however, we also put together quite a spread of refreshments in the kitchen. In honor of the occasion, Suzanne, Beth and I decided to make recipes we had gotten from our families. Choosing to avoid the whole issue of 50s and 60s suburban cooking and various strange recipes we encountered as children (for example, Beth revealed that she has a vintage WeightWatchers recipe for chocolate jello that her mother often made), I decided to jump back a generation and bring gingerbread from a recipe I got from my paternal grandmother, Jeane Crawford Thomas. The funny thing about sharing a recipe from Grandmother is that although she got meals on the table for her family for years, she never liked to cook. In fact, Grandmother thought housework was a demeaning activity for any woman with a brain. Her creative solution to the problem of having to cook for her family in any case, was to become as efficient as possible at it. This recipe that she got from her neighbor, Mrs. O'Rourke, in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, wins over mid-century boxed mixes, hands down. It is both easy to make and uses simple ingredients that would have been stocked in any early twentieth-century kitchen. Here is the recipe, plus a photo of my grandmother at her sink.

MRS. O'ROURKE'S GINGERBREAD (from JEANE CRAWFORD THOMAS)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening (butter can be substituted)
1 cup black strap molasses
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water (do this at the last minute)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and shortening. Combine with eggs and molasses and beat well. Sift flour with dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water and add to batter. Mix thoroughly (by hand) and pour into a greased, square baking pan. Bake 25 minutes. Cut into cake-like squares when cool and serve with whipped heavy cream, if desired.