Turkey Trot
1 cup molasses, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup (grated) Walter Baker's Sweet Chocolate, 3 tablespoonfuls butter, Yolks 2 eggs, 1 tablespoonful soda, 3 tablespoonfuls hot water, 1 teaspoonful vanilla, Flour.
Mix molasses, sugar and grated chocolate. Add butter, melted, yolks of eggs slightly beaten, soda dissolved in water and vanilla; then add enough flour to make of right consistency to roll. Chill, toss one-quarter at a time on a slightly floured board, pat and roll to one-eighth inch in thickness, and shape, with a tin cutter, in the form of a turkey, first dipped in flour. Put on a buttered tin and bake in a moderate oven. Ornament each with the words "Turkey Trot" made by forcing ornamental frosting, white or pink, through a pastry bag and tube.
A rolled molasses-chocolate cookie cut in the shape of a turkey and iced with a slogan. The dough is soft and sticky until chilled, and the flour is left to the cook's judgement.
- Chill is the hingeWith a cup of molasses and melted butter, the dough is unrollable at room temperature. Wrap and refrigerate at least two hours, and keep three-quarters of it cold while you roll the fourth.
- Flour, unstated"Enough flour to make of right consistency to roll" works out to roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups for this quantity of liquid. Add it in stages and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; extra flour makes these hard rather than crisp.
- The chocolateWalter Baker's Sweet Chocolate was a sweetened dark chocolate sold in cakes or bars; the same firm's German's Sweet Chocolate, still sold today, is the nearest surviving relative. A third of a cup grated is roughly 1 1/2 ounces; a sweet dark bar in the region of 45-50 percent cacao is a close match. Grate it cold so it does not clump in the molasses.
- A tablespoon of sodaThat is three teaspoons for a single batch, high by modern standards but not a misprint: molasses of this era was acidic and the soda both leavened and softened the dough. If your molasses is a mild unsulphured supermarket brand, expect a faintly soapy, alkaline edge; two teaspoons is a defensible reduction.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. At one-eighth inch these bake in about 7 to 10 minutes and go from set to burnt quickly, since molasses and sugar both brown fast. Pull them when the edges firm and the centres still look soft.
- Buttered tinParchment on a flat sheet is better here; the sugar in the dough sticks and turkey feet tear off when you lift them.
- Ornamental frostingThis means royal icing: egg white beaten with sifted confectioners' sugar to a piping consistency, tinted pink with a drop of colouring. It must be stiff enough to hold a fine line and the cookies must be completely cool.
- YieldAbout three to four dozen cookies from a three-inch cutter, depending how much dough the turkey shape wastes on rerolls.
Choice Recipes was a promotional booklet issued by Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, the oldest chocolate firm in the country, and it collected contributions from the leading cookery authorities of the day, among them Maria Parloa, Janet McKenzie Hill and Fannie Merritt Farmer. The name here is pure topicality: the turkey trot was a ragtime dance that swept American ballrooms around 1910-1914, notorious enough to be denounced from pulpits and banned in some cities, and a cookie cut in the shape of a bird and lettered with the dance's name is the sort of joke a hostess of that moment would have understood instantly. The dough itself is much older than the joke, being a standard rolled molasses cookie of the New England kind, with grated chocolate worked in to sell the sponsor's product.