Foods of England - Moggie Cake

Moggie Cake

Cakes
Yorkshire

(or Moggy)

Raised cake, usually with ginger and a substantial admixture of treacle or golden syrup.

The name and receipts are widely known, but the origin is obscure. It is not in dictionaries such as Hargroves’s ‘Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect‘ of 1808. The ‘Yorkshire Magazine‘ of October 1871 has; “Their tea may include at times by way of a treat a piece of moggy which is a cake made of proportions of flour, meal, potatoes and fat”

Ginger Moggy Cake
Image: http://northacomb.co.uk

Original Receipt in ‘The Agricultural Gazette and Modern Farming‘ – Volume 96 – 1922 – Page 441

Moggy Cake. 1 lb. of flour, 2 oz. of lard, 1 oz. of butter. 4 oz. of brown moist sugar, 4 oz. of treacle, 1 teaspoonful of ground ginger, half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, 1 egg, and a little milk to mix into a damp dough. Bake for about half an hour.

Original Receipt from the ‘Southern Reporter‘ – Thursday 16 September 1926

YORKSHIRE MOGGY CAKE. – Ingredients : Four tablespoonfuls flour, three tablespoons fine oatmeal, two ounces butter, two tablespoonfuls sugar, one teaspoonful baking-powder, one teaspoonful spice, one teaspoonful ground ginger, two tablespoonfuls golden syrup, half teacupful milk, and one egg. Method: Mix dry ingredients, then rub in butter. Beat the egg and add it. Also add the golden syrup and milk mixed together. Bake the cake a moderate oven.

See also:
Parkin

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