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Walnut Molasses Bars
1/4 cup butter 3 cups flour 1/4 cup lard 1/2 tablespoon ginger 1/4 cup boiling water 1/3 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/8 teaspoon clove 1/2 cup molasses 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon soda Chopped walnut meat Pour water over butter and lard, then add sugar, molasses mixed with soda, flour, salt, and spices. Chill thoroughly, roll one-fourth inch thick, cut in strips three and one-half inches long by one and one-half inches wide. Sprinkle with nut meat and bake ten minutes.
A stiff rolled molasses dough, cut into bars rather than rounds, from the era when spice cookies were treated as a branch of bread making. The original gives no oven temperature, which is the one thing you need to supply.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives no oven temperature. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits quarter-inch molasses dough; molasses and brown sugar scorch quickly, so watch the ten minutes and take the bars out while the centres still look slightly soft.
- The soda goes in the molassesStirring the teaspoon of soda into the molasses before it meets the flour is deliberate. The acid in the molasses reacts at once, foaming the mixture and lightening a dough that has no egg and no chemical leavening otherwise. Do not dump the soda in with the flour instead.
- LardUse leaf lard or plain rendered pork lard if you have it, for the short, sandy texture it gives. All butter works and tastes richer but spreads more; shortening is the closest modern one-for-one substitute for the lard portion.
- Melting, not creamingThe quarter cup of boiling water poured over the fats is meant to melt them, not make a batter. Add the sugar and molasses while it is still warm so everything dissolves, then work in the flour.
- Chilling is not optionalThe recipe says to chill thoroughly, and with the fat melted by the boiling water the warm dough is soft and sticky to handle. An hour or two in the refrigerator, or overnight, makes it behave; roll it between sheets of parchment and return the trimmings to the cold before re-rolling.
- Odd spice measuresThe half tablespoon of ginger is a full teaspoon and a half, which is a firm ginger hit, and the eighth teaspoon of clove is meant to sit behind it. The third of a teaspoon of nutmeg is an awkward measure; the recipe already calls for it grated, so measure it as written.
- Making the nuts stickSprinkling chopped walnuts on bare rolled dough leaves most of them on the pan. Scatter them over the sheet of dough before cutting and press them in with the rolling pin, or brush the surface with water or milk first.
- YieldAbout three dozen bars at the stated dimensions, depending on how thin you roll and how much dough goes to trimmings.
Molasses was an everyday sweetener of American baking well into the twentieth century, often cheaper than refined sugar, and it carried the ginger-and-clove spicing that had come down from English gingerbread. Walnuts were the practical nut for such a book in the United States, black walnuts in much of the country and English walnuts where they could be bought. Cutting the dough into oblong bars rather than rounds leaves almost no scraps from a rolled sheet.