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Oatmeal Jam-Jams
¾ cup butter (or half lard) ½ cup sweet milk 1 egg 1 cup sugar ½ teaspoon soda 1 cup Five Roses flour 2 cups rolled oats.
If not stiff enough, add a little more flour and oatmeal maintaining proportions. Turn a large dripping pan upside down and roll out on the bottom covering the whole pan, and bake in a quick oven.
When done, cut in halves and spread jam between the halves. Then cut in squares. Date, or raisin or fig fillings may be used instead of jam, if desired.
These are really delicious.
This is a sheet-baked sandwich cookie rather than a drop cookie, and the two details the original leaves out are the temperature and the time. Everything else translates straightforwardly.
- The hinge: bake it paleRolled thin over a whole pan, this dough goes from set to hard in a couple of minutes. Pull it when the surface looks dry and the edges are just colouring — it firms considerably as it cools, and an overbaked sheet will shatter instead of cut.
- "A quick oven"Usually reckoned somewhere around 400-425F, though the term is imprecise, and in any case that is hot for a thin oat sheet in a modern oven with even heat. Bake at 375-400F for 12-15 minutes and judge by colour.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat flour. Ordinary all-purpose is the substitute; measure the cup by scooping and levelling.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified to distinguish it from the buttermilk or sour milk that many recipes of the period called for. Use whole milk.
- Soda with no acidHalf a teaspoon of soda in sweet milk has little to react with, so expect a dense, short, slightly biscuit-like sheet rather than a risen one. That is correct for jam-jams. If you want a touch more lift, a teaspoon of baking powder in place of the soda is the period-appropriate swap.
- SaltNone is listed, on the assumption of salted butter or lard. With unsalted butter, add ½ teaspoon.
- Rolled oatsUse large-flake or old-fashioned oats. Quick oats absorb differently and give a pasty rather than a chewy sheet; instant oats will not work at all.
- The inverted dripping panA dripping pan was the large pan used under a roast; turning it over gave a big flat surface with no sides to obstruct the rolling pin. A rimless baking sheet, or a sheet pan turned upside down, does the same job. Roll directly on it, lightly floured, or on parchment cut to size.
- Assembly and yieldCut the baked sheet in half while still warm, spread one half with jam or a cooked date filling, top with the other, then cut into squares once cool so the edges stay clean. A standard half-sheet's worth gives roughly 24 to 30 small squares.
Jam-jams belong to the family of filled sandwich cookies that Canadian home bakers made in quantity for lunch pails and church teas, and the name is most associated with the Prairies and the Maritimes, where date-filled versions are as common as jam. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, a firm headquartered in Montreal with mills at Keewatin and a presence in Winnipeg, to promote its Five Roses brand, and like most milling-company cookbooks it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by customers, which is why the writing keeps a contributor's voice down to the closing verdict that these are really delicious. The sheet-and-cut method here is a labour-saving one: rolling a single large slab on the back of a dripping pan and dividing it afterwards was much faster than cutting and pairing rounds, and it reflects a kitchen baking for a big table rather than for looks.