Miss Mogie’s Molasses Gunger

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by David Cecelski

I had a dessert called molasses gunger for the first time the other night and my goodness, it was good. Now I’m even more excited about the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum’s “Taste of Core Sound” coming up on February 28^th. This wonderful event is a twice-annual high-dollar fundraising dinner featuring traditional coastal delicacies that you won’t find in any restaurant. Local fishermen will be providing the seafood, island ladies will fix recipes handed down over generations, and you won’t find a better coastal dinner anywhere.

This year’s menu includes stewed Cedar Island oysters, shrimp and crabmeat casserole, scallop fritters, stewed wild game, Ocracoke pork roast (a Ballance family recipe, I’ve heard), collards, squash casserole, baked sweet potatoes, baked cornbread and classic Down East light rolls. And then, when you have eaten all that and need to fortify yourself for the mind-numbing dinner speaker (yours truly), there will be molasses gunger. Trust me, the gunger alone will be worth the trip to Harkers Island and the price of two tickets.

 

Karen Amspacher, the museum’s director, gave me my first taste of gunger at a dinner at Crab Point the other day. It was worth writing home about: a rich, dark, moist cake, a little chewy, a lot delicious, and the very essence of molasses. Karen learned the recipe from her mother, Mrs. Wanda Willis, who grew up near Harkers Island, in Marshallberg. Mrs. Willis’s mother, Mrs. Harriet Davis Hill, taught her the recipe.

Molasses gunger may be more widespread than I realize. But from what I’ve heard, you can only find gunger on a stretch of the North Carolina coastline roughly between Salter Path, on Bogue Banks, and Hatteras Island. And unquestionably, its roots there go back deep into America’s maritime history.

A little molasses history: First created by African slaves in the colonial West Indies, molasses is made by crushing sugar cane and boiling the juice. Its popularity in some of the coast’s most traditional dishes dates to the colonial shipping trade with the West Indies. For much of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, there was a sizeable two-way trade between Carolina ports and Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti and other “sugar islands” in the West Indies. We sent the islands lumber, salt pork and beef, and other necessities. They sent us molasses (and sometimes slaves).

Rum, made from fermented molasses, was also incredibly popular in colonial North Carolina. Because of the abundance of molasses here, even our home-distilled liquor was often really rum, not corn liquor, well into the 20^th century. “The truth is in the food,” Karen likes to say. And in this case, forgotten recipes like molasses gunger speak to ancient trade routes, historic ties to the West Indies and a maritime past that, at least on Core Sound, is not entirely lost.

 

To get your own taste of molasses gunger, come to the Taste of Core Sound on Thursday night, February 28th, at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, 1785 Island Road, Harkers Island. A wine and cheese reception starts at 6 pm, dinner at 7 pm and the program at 8 pm. For reservations, call (252) 728-1500. The cost of the fundraiser is $150/couple for museum members, $175/couple for new members (includes annual membership), and $75/$85 for individuals. You can learn more at the Museum’s web site, www.coresound.com.

Here is a recipe for gunger that Karen sent me. It comes from Miss Mogie Brown, who grew up and learned her gunger recipe at Hatteras on the Outer Banks.

MISS MOGIE’S GUNGER

Blend together:

¾ cup shortening
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
1 cup sugar

Sift together:

2 cups plain flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. all-spice
¼ tsp. nutmeg

Mix together flour and molasses mixture. Add 1 cup of boiling water with 1 tsp. soda. Beat well. Put in greased pan and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until cake leaves the side of the pan.

 

photos of Core Sound Waterfowl Museum by David Cecelski

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