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Mocha Jumbles
3 tablespoonfuls of butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 2 tablespoonfuls of cold coffee, 1 1/2 oz. of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate melted in 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1 1/2 to 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
Mix in order given, roll 1/3 inch in thickness, cut with doughnut cutter--sprinkle with sugar and bake.
A rolled cookie dough with the ring shape of a jumble; the original gives no oven temperature or time, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timeBake at 375F on parchment-lined sheets. At 1/3 inch thick these need roughly 8-10 minutes and should be pulled while the centres still feel slightly soft.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was unsweetened chocolate liquor in cake form, the direct ancestor of today's unsweetened baking chocolate. Use 1 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate; do not substitute semisweet, which will make the dough too sweet and too soft.
- Butter measureThree tablespoons is about 1 1/2 oz, plus the extra tablespoon melted with the chocolate. That is a lean dough by modern cookie standards, which is why it rolls rather than spreads.
- The flour range1 1/2 to 2 cups is a range, so add only enough to get a dough that rolls without sticking. Extra flour past that point tends to make the jumbles dry and hard.
- Chill before rollingThe dough is easier to handle after 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll on a lightly floured board and re-roll scraps only once.
- Doughnut cutterA ring cutter; period sizes varied, commonly around 2 1/2 to 3 inches with a centre hole of roughly an inch. Two round cutters work as well, and the punched-out centres will bake faster, so watch them.
- The coffeeTwo tablespoons of strong cold brewed coffee, rather than instant dissolved in water if you can avoid it. The 'mocha' name reflects the coffee-and-chocolate pairing, so make the coffee strong.
- Sugar toppingSprinkle granulated sugar on the cut rounds before baking, pressing lightly so it adheres. Coarse sugar gives a better crackle than superfine.
- YieldAbout 30 rings from the smaller flour quantity, depending on cutter size.
Jumbles are one of the oldest continuously printed English-language cookie names, appearing in seventeenth-century receipt books as thin sugar cakes, often flavoured with rose water or caraway and shaped into rings or knots; the name is generally traced to the coiled or knotted form rather than to any ingredient. By the time Walter Baker & Co. issued its Choice Recipes pamphlets, the jumble had become a plain rolled cookie cut with whatever ring cutter the kitchen owned, and "mocha" simply signalled the pairing of coffee with chocolate rather than any connection to the Yemeni port that gave the word its origin. The recipe's real purpose is visible in its middle line: these booklets were promotional literature, distributed free to sell Baker's chocolate by naming the exact product in every formula, and the company's Dorchester, Massachusetts mills were among the largest chocolate works in the country when it was printed.