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Jelly Jumbles
1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup sour milk 1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 egg Flour 1/2 teaspoon soda Currant jelly Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, egg well beaten, soda mixed with milk, salt and flour to make a soft dough. Chill and shape, using a round cutter. On the centres of one-half the pieces put currant jelly. Make three small openings in remaining halves, using a thimble, and put pieces together. Press edges slightly, and bake in a rather hot oven, that jumbles may keep in good shape.
A cut-out jam sandwich cookie of the sour-milk-and-soda school, where the flour is left to the cook's judgement. The dough is soft, so temperature control matters more than the recipe lets on.
- Flour quantityThe original gives no amount. Expect roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups of all-purpose flour to reach a dough soft enough to chill but firm enough to roll; add the last half cup by feel rather than by measure.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk meant milk left to sour naturally, acidic enough to activate the soda. Substitute buttermilk cup for cup, or 1/2 cup whole milk with 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left five minutes.
- "A rather hot oven"No temperature is given; a hot oven in period terms is usually read as somewhere around 400F. The high heat sets the edges before the dough can slump, which is the reason the recipe itself gives for it. Bake roughly 8-10 minutes, until the rims are just coloured.
- Chilling is the hingeWith a half cup of butter and only 1/2 cup of liquid, the dough handles badly warm. Chill it at least an hour, roll it about 1/4 inch thick, and return the cut rounds to the refrigerator while you fill the bottoms.
- The thimbleThe recipe uses a sewing thimble to cut the vents. The wide end of a piping tip, an apple corer, or the cap of a spice jar does the same work.
- JellyCurrant jelly was a common choice and holds its shape in heat. Use about a rounded teaspoon per cookie; more will boil out through the vents. A firm-set jelly works far better than a loose jam.
- SealingPress only the outer rim, and press lightly, as directed. Crimping hard forces the jelly toward the openings and squeezes it out during baking.
- YieldWith a 2 1/2-inch cutter this makes roughly 18 to 20 filled jumbles.