Molasses and Slowing Down: The Shoo-Fly Cake

For My Dad

The Shoo-Fly Cake takes its name from the shoo-fly pie—a real vintage classic. It takes someone with an affinity for the bold, robust flavor of molasses to enjoy this one. It’s not for everyone.

With that said, I knew the perfect person to bequeath this dark beauty. When I go to my parents’ house, I usually deliver a cake I know will thrill my mom. One constant with her disease progression is her love of sweets. But this week’s cake was an offering to my dad.

A Simple Cake to Start the Day

To be honest, I was tight on cake-baking time this week, balancing it with work that doesn’t get done without me, moving our son to a new city, and going out of town to take my mom to a doctor's appointment. I decided to whip this one out one morning after the gym. I was thankful for a truly simple recipe.

It was strangely fun beginning the day with cake. As I was incorporating the butter into the flour and dark brown sugar for the topping, I realized it was like playing with moon sand. Have you ever played with moon sand? There’s something pleasantly relaxing about it. This realization was surely a result of my renewed focus on paying attention, noticing, and enjoying the present (something I’ve told myself every morning this week).

Calling All Molasses Lovers

Two ingredients made this cake what it was—deep, dark, and earthy. Clearly, the blackstrap molasses addition was essential. The recipe also incorporated a cup of coffee. This was a win-win situation because I got to enjoy extra coffee that morning—obviously, I didn’t brew just one additional cup.

This recipe didn’t include all the rich ingredients like some of the others, but the generous addition of molasses resulted in a dense, moist cake with a bit of chewy crunch around the outer edge. If you love molasses, this is calling your name.

Heed the Recommendations

Having made this cake in the morning, and with the author’s recommendation to eat it warm out of the oven, unsurprisingly, we had cake for breakfast.

In the recipe description from Vintage Cakes, the author Julie Richardson suggests accompanying the warm cake with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. We only had vanilla, so it had to suffice. Admittedly, I’m not a molasses lover, nor is my husband, but we both agreed it was good. The cake itself was a lovely texture, and the crumb topping was magnificent.

The remainder of the cake travelled to my parents’ house to await our return from my mom’s appointment. We diverted to grab some chocolate ice cream on the way home. I mean, it was the recommendation. 

It’s astounding what a difference a slight variation can make. The rich and creamy chocolate ice cream tempered the bitter molasses. The chocolate contributed to the depth of the flavor profile and was an excellent complement. It really was superior to vanilla ice cream.

A Sweet Spot: The Transcend Moment

When visiting my parents, my cake-of-the-week is typically for my mom, but I thought I’d try something different.

This past week, I’ve made a very intentional decision to truly pay attention to the present and notice what’s around me. Slow down. Do you know what makes me think of slowing down? Molasses. One of my dad’s most utilized phrases is “slower than molasses in January,” making this cake fitting in more ways than one. I slowed down enough to see my dad.

This man wouldn’t normally eat something outside of his schedule and routine. He doesn’t typically try new things. But when we got home from the doctor’s appointment, he ate a piece of the cake. It surprised me, and it somehow made me feel validated. 

I felt like I’d offered him some small sliver of enjoyment. Like maybe he just needed a jolt of something different.

In life, we often can’t fix things, but sometimes we can lean in and try to absorb some of the struggle. I hope easing my dad out of his routine in the tiniest way was helpful even if he didn’t realize it.

This morning, on my walk around the farm, I took a moment to smell the fresh air, admire the flowers, and look closely at the wet grass and clover. My reward, and a punctuation on this lesson, was a four-leaf clover. Had I not taken that moment, I wouldn't have had an obvious reminder of how lucky I am.

So, thank you, molasses and intention, for slowing things down and providing a sweet spot in an otherwise not-so-sweet season.