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Ginger Snaps
1 cup molasses 1/2 teaspoon soda 1/2 cup shortening 1 tablespoon ginger 3 1/4 cups flour 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Heat molasses to boiling-point and pour over shortening. Add dry ingredients mixed and sifted. Chill thoroughly. Toss one-fourth of mixture on a floured board and roll as thinly as possible; shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. Place near together on a buttered sheet and bake in a moderate oven. Gather up the trimmings and roll with another portion of dough. During rolling, the bowl containing mixture should be kept in a cool place, or it will be necessary to add more flour to dough, which makes cookies hard rather than crisp and short.
A thin, crisp rolled ginger snap of the type standard in American cooking schools around 1900. The whole recipe hinges on keeping the dough cold so you never have to add flour to it.
- The hinge: keep the dough coldChill the mixture until firm and work with one quarter at a time, returning the rest to the refrigerator. Warm dough sticks, tempts you into extra flour, and extra flour is what turns these from short and crisp to hard.
- Moderate ovenThe original gives no temperature; read it as roughly 350-375F. Rolled paper-thin, the rounds need only about 6 to 9 minutes; they firm as they cool, so pull them when the edges have set and darkened slightly rather than waiting for the centres to look done.
- ShorteningIn 1900 this meant lard, or a lard-and-butter mixture, or one of the newer vegetable shortenings. Any solid fat works; butter gives the best flavour, vegetable shortening the crispest snap. Half a cup is about 4 oz for butter, a little less for lard or vegetable shortening.
- Boiling the molassesHeating molasses to the boiling point and pouring it over the fat melts the fat and drives off a little water. Use unsulphured molasses; blackstrap is more bitter than the recipe intends. Watch it, as molasses foams up fast.
- Soda and saltHalf a teaspoon of soda is deliberately small, working against the acid in the molasses for browning and a little lift rather than a puffy cookie. A teaspoon of salt is plenty if you are using salted butter.
- Buttered sheetParchment does the job better and makes lifting the thin rounds off far easier. "Place near together" is sound advice: these spread very little.
- YieldNot given in the original. With a small cutter, about 1 1/2 to 2 inches, expect roughly five to seven dozen. They keep for weeks in a tin and crisp back up in a low oven if they soften.