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Coffee Snaps
½ cup molasses ½ cup sugar ½ cup lard and butter (mixed) ½ teaspoon soda dissolved in ¼ cup strong coffee Five Roses flour to roll.
Bake in quick oven. Roll thin and while warm put 2 together with jam or jelly.
A molasses snap with coffee as the liquid, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what the dough should feel like. Two things need pinning down: how much flour, and how hot.
- "Flour to roll" — the real quantityExpect roughly 2½ to 3 cups of all-purpose flour, added until the dough is stiff enough to roll thin without tearing. Work in the last half cup gradually; the molasses and sugar keep it softer than it looks, and overshooting gives you a hard, dry snap rather than a crisp one.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. At that heat thin rounds should be done in about 5 to 7 minutes, and they scorch at the edges quickly because of the molasses. Watch the first tray and set your timing from it.
- Lard and butter mixedThe recipe does not give the proportion, so equal parts is the usual assumption. The lard gives the short snap, the butter the flavour. All butter works and spreads a little more; modern vegetable shortening substitutes for the lard without much loss.
- Soda in the coffeeDissolving the soda in the strong coffee before it goes into the molasses is not decorative; it distributes the soda evenly and starts it reacting with the acid in the molasses. Mix the dough promptly once combined.
- Roll thinAbout ⅛ inch. This is a snap, not a soft cooky; thickness is what decides whether it crisps. Chill the dough 30 minutes if it fights you, and roll between sheets of parchment rather than flouring heavily.
- Sandwiching while warmThe jam goes on while the cookies are still warm and pliable, as the recipe directs. Cold snaps crack under pressure. A thick preserve or firm jelly holds better than a loose one, which will soak the biscuit soft overnight.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal, and distributed to promote its Five Roses flour, which is why the ingredient list names the brand outright where any other book would say simply "flour." Much of the content was solicited from Canadian housewives, which accounts for the compressed, assumed-knowledge style here — no pan size, no baking time, no yield, because the contributor was writing down something she made from memory. Coffee turns up in period molasses cookies as a cheap dark liquid that deepens the colour and cuts the sweetness, the same role strong tea plays in some fruit cakes; the pairing of a spiced or molasses snap with coffee grounds or brewed coffee is common across late nineteenth and early twentieth century North American cooky sections. Sandwiching two thin snaps with jam while still warm is often said to have been a way of turning a plain rolled cooky into something fit for company without any additional baking.