Light Molasses is the sweetest and lightest of the three kinds of molasses. It’s also called first pass, mild, sweet, and light molasses. It’s the one most commonly used when baking ginger cookies, gingersnaps, gingerbread, and ginger cakes.
Dark molasses, also called full, robust, cooking, or second pass, is thicker, darker, and stronger. This is used in baking gingerbreads with a stronger, more molasses-y flavor.
Blackstrap Molasses is the darkest and thickest of the three types of molasses. It’s bitter and not really used for baking, more for savories like baked beans and barbecue.
Gingerbread loaf ingredients
All the ingredients for gingerbread are pretty standard loaf ingredients, with a couple of special mentions. You’ll need: flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, salt, butter, sugar, egg, molasses, and applesauce.
Ginger: Try to use fresh powdered ginger as ginger tends to loose its potency as it sits in your cabinet. I love my gingerbread extra gingery and sometimes I even add an extra teaspoon to the mix.
Molasses: Make sure you get the right kind of molasses, because it’s important! You want unsulfured fancy or light molasses, more on that below!
Applesauce: This adds an extra bit of moisture in your loaf.
Which molasses should I use for gingerbread?
This gingerbread uses light/fancy molasses.
But maybe you’re wondering: what is molasses?
Molasses is a dark and sticky smoky syrup that’s the byproduct of refining sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets.
