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Barley Drop Cakes
1 egg, beaten 2 tablespoons melted shortening ¾ cup brown sugar 1/2 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1/2 cup rice flour or cornstarch 1 cup barley flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon ¾ teaspoon powdered cloves 1/2 cup water To beaten egg add shortening, sugar and cocoanut.
Sift together flours, salt, baking powder and spices; add to the first mixture alternately with water. Beat thoroughly, and drop from a spoon on greased tins.
Bake in a moderate oven.
COCOANUT "NO-WHEAT" FANCIES 1 egg, beaten 1/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1 cup rolled oats 1 tablespoon butter, melted 1/3 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Add sugar slowly to egg, stir in cocoanut, oats, butter, salt and vanilla. Drop by teaspoonfuls on inverted cake tins, spread into circular shape, and bake in a moderate oven.
A wheat-free drop cookie from the era when wheat was being conserved for export, sweetened with brown sugar and heavily spiced. The batter is soft and spreads little, so shape it on the pan.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is usually reckoned at about 350 to 375F; the recipe gives no temperature or time. Drop cookies of this size will want roughly 12 to 15 minutes; pull them when the edges are set and the tops no longer look wet.
- The sugar quantityThe brown sugar is printed as "34 cup" and the cloves as "34 teaspoon"; both are three-quarters (3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 teaspoon cloves). Three-quarters of a teaspoon of ground cloves is assertive but in keeping with the period's spice-forward baking.
- Barley flourStill sold, usually as a fine-milled light barley flour in natural-food aisles. It develops very little gluten structure (though barley is not a gluten-free grain), so the cookies rely on the baking powder and the egg; do not expect the batter to develop elasticity.
- Rice flour or cornstarchEither works, but they behave differently. Rice flour gives a slightly sandy, crisp cookie; cornstarch gives a softer, more tender one that browns less.
- CocoanutDromedary sold shredded coconut in cans; whether this product was sweetened is not stated here. Modern sweetened shredded coconut is a reasonable stand-in; if you use unsweetened, the cookies will read as noticeably less sweet.
- ShorteningTwo tablespoons of melted shortening is all the fat in the recipe. Melted butter or a neutral oil substitutes directly, butter adding flavour the original did not have.
- ShapingDrop by rounded teaspoonfuls and flatten each slightly with the back of a wet spoon so the centres cook through; this low-gluten batter tends to hold its shape rather than spreading.
- YieldAbout 24 to 30 small cookies. They firm as they cool and keep two or three days in a tin, though the barley flour dries them faster than a wheat cookie.
Dromedary, a brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, packed dates and shredded coconut in cans and gave away small recipe books to move the product. Booklets like this one are often placed in the First World War period and just after, when American home cooks were urged to save wheat flour for the Allies; substitute grains such as barley, rice, oat and corn appear all through the recipes, and the companion cookie here is frankly labelled a "No-Wheat" fancy. Barley flour was one of the standard recommended substitutes of the Food Administration campaigns, and the heavy hand with cinnamon and cloves is striking. The result is a genuine artifact of wartime thrift cookery rather than a traditional dish.