Home › Cakes, Cookies, Doughnuts › Dropped Hermit Cookies
Dropped Hermit Cookies
One cup of butter, one and one-half cups of brown sugar, one cup of raisins chopped fine, one cup of English walnuts chopped fine, one and one-third cups of flour, three eggs, one teaspoon of cinnamon, one teaspoon of cloves, one teaspoon of allspice, one teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of soda in hot water.
Cream sugar and butter together, add the other ingredients, and then put small drops of the mixture in your pans for baking.-Mrs G. Barrett Rich.
A rich, spice-heavy drop cookie with almost no structural flour, so the batter behaves more like a soft toffee than a dough. Nearly everything that can go wrong here is a spreading problem.
- Chill the batterOne cup of butter and three eggs against only one and one-third cups of flour makes a very loose mixture that will run together in the pan. An hour in the refrigerator before scooping is the single change that makes these bake as cookies rather than one sheet.
- The soda in hot waterDissolve the teaspoon of soda in about a tablespoon of hot water and add it last, then get the pans into the oven promptly. Dissolving soda in liquid was a common instruction in recipes of this period, and it also gets the leavening working straight away.
- No oven temperature givenCookbooks of this vintage assumed the cook knew her range. Bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres still look slightly underdone.
- SaltA full teaspoon assumes unsalted or lightly salted butter and unsalted nuts. With modern salted butter, half a teaspoon is closer to the intended balance.
- Butter measurementOne cup of butter is two sticks, 8 oz. Cream it soft rather than melted, or the batter will spread further still.
- "English walnuts"Simply the common walnut, so named to distinguish it from the native black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous. Ordinary walnuts are what is wanted.
- Chopping the raisinsFinely chopped raisins distribute through a thin batter far better than whole ones, which sink and scorch on the pan bottom. It is worth doing as written; a quick pulse in a food processor with a spoonful of the flour keeps them from clumping.
- Pans and spacing"Small drops" means roughly a rounded teaspoon, set at least two inches apart on a lined sheet. The quantities are generous and will make a large number of cookies.
Hermits are a New England cookie, and the name is usually explained by their keeping quality "like a hermit" they stay good in a tin for weeks. The type is defined by molasses or brown sugar, dried fruit and the warm trio of cinnamon, cloves and allspice, spices that were cheap and shelf-stable in a way that fresh flavourings were not. This version is a dropped hermit rather than the bar or rolled kind, and it is attributed to Mrs G. Barrett Rich under her married name a form of household authorship that gave ordinary cooks a byline in print.