Old Fashioned Soft Molasses Cookies

 

I brought home an old cookbook from my Mom's stash of recipes.  I wish I'd have asked her more about it when she was alive, but now I'm just making guesses as to it's history.  This book is the Larkin Housewives Cook Book.  Copyright 1915,16,17, and 1923.   I love old books.  My Mom was born in 1929.  I would guess this is her mothers' cookbook.  Her mother passed away when Mom was 6 years old.  My grandpa cooked and had housekeepers to come watch after the house and children for several years after.  Any of them could have enjoyed using this cook book.   

There are a few recipes with "good" or "very good" penciled in to the side.  A few small notes in lovely handwriting. (There are even pencil scribbles from a child on a few of the back pages - I had fun imagining my Mom or her brothers doing that while their mom's back was turned.)   One way I can tell the best recipes is in play in this book though, the ingredient stained pages scattered about through the book.  Interestingly I found many more stains in the cakes, cookies, and desserts sections than in the main and side dish sections.   I'd venture a guess that whomever was using this was cooking pretty basic meals; meat, potatoes, vegetable, and wouldn't need recipes for those.  Baking is a more exact undertaking and needs measurements.

Today I tried one of the recipes with "good" written to the side.  Soft Molasses Cookies.   It was fun to imagine my ancestors stirring up the exact recipe I'd chosen to make but so many years ago.  Almost 100 years!   I did choose to use my Kitchen Aid mixer though, imagining how it was to cook then and actually doing it that way are totally different pursuits!  I'm sure these were originally cooked in a woodfired oven.   I'm grateful for the conveniences I enjoy in my kitchen!

I'll type up the recipe for these in addition to the photo to make it easier to read.  Many of the recipes in this book seem to assume that you already have a good knowledge of cooking and baking.

Soft Molasses Cookies

Cream one and one-half cups brown sugar and one cup lard.  Add two eggs and one cup molasses; beat well.   Sift together five cups bread flour, one teaspoon soda, one tablespoon ground ginger, one teaspoon salt; add to other ingredients.
Now add one cup boiling water very gradually and beat well.  Drop by the spoonful onto greased baking-sheets and bake in moderate oven.    ~Mrs. W. Ed. Hughes, East Rochester, N.Y.

Joy's Notes:  I didn't have lard on hand, you can still find it in the grocery store and I often use it for pie crust, but for this I used Crisco shortening.  I find that store brand shortening is more firm and closer to lard, but we use what we have on hand most of the time! 

I cut this in half to try it and used heaping spoonfuls of dough on the first pan and smaller spoonfuls of dough on the second pan.  It yielded 24 cookies. (12 larger, 12 smaller)  

A moderate oven is about 350 degrees and as it didn't give baking times, I left the first pan in for 10 minutes and they were a little doughy in the center.  I left the second pan in 11 minutes and cooled several minutes on the cookie sheet after and they were still a tad doughy.  This is a cake-like cookie, not as sweet as we're probably used to now, and would be delicious with a cream cheese frosting.   This was fun to try and I would definitely  make it again.