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Prize Sugar Cookies
(At one of the fall fairs when there was a mixed competition of cookies made from all kinds of flours, this recipe with Five Roses flour took first prize. -Leonard H. Bishop, Golder, B.C.) 2 cups sugar 1 cup butter 3 eggs ½ cup milk 1 teaspoon soda 2 teaspoons cream of tartar Pinch of salt Five Roses flour to roll.
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then milk. Add enough flour to roll out, sifting soda, cream of tartar and salt into the flour.
A rolled sugar cooky of the old prize-fair type, written for a cook who judged dough by feel rather than by cup. The only real difficulty is the flour, which is left entirely to you.
- "Flour to roll" — the missing measurementWith 2 cups sugar, 1 cup butter, 3 eggs and ½ cup milk, expect somewhere around 5 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour before the dough will handle. Add it in stages and stop when the dough is soft but no longer tacky; too much makes the cookies dry and hard, which is why the original leaves it to judgment.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two teaspoons cream of tartar is the classic homemade baking powder proportion, one part base to two parts acid. Sift them thoroughly through the flour as directed; soda that is not evenly distributed can leave bitter spots in the baked cooky.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian household flour milled from hard spring wheat, stronger than most modern all-purpose. All-purpose is the closer modern match for a rolled cooky; if you use bread flour, mix and roll with a light hand to avoid toughness.
- Chill before rollingThe dough is very soft with a full cup of butter and three eggs. An hour in the refrigerator makes it roll cleanly at about ¼ inch and keeps the cookies from spreading into each other.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or time is given in the recipe. Bake at 375°F for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just coloured and the centres still look pale.
- YieldA large batch by modern standards — roughly six to seven dozen 2½-inch cookies. They keep well in a tin.
- FinishingRolled sugar cookies of this type were often sprinkled with granulated sugar before cutting, pressed in lightly with the rolling pin. The recipe itself gives no finishing instruction.
Five Roses was the flour of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, and its cook book — assembled from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives and farmers, credited by name and town — was for decades one of the most widely owned books in Canadian kitchens. This entry shows the genre at its most characteristic: a contributor from "Golder, B.C." (as the book prints it; Golden is the likely place meant) offering not just a recipe but a competitive credential, a first prize at a fall fair in a class open to all flours. Agricultural fair baking competitions were taken seriously in rural Canada, and a win by a named brand was useful advertising for the miller. Soda paired with cream of tartar as a leavener was ordinary household practice before commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable.