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Raisin-Filled Cookies
Sift together { 2 t cream of tartar. 1 C sugar 1/2 C butter or lard 1/2 C sweet milk 1 t vanilla 1 egg Sift together { Mrs. Edgar Wells. 2 t cream of tartar 1 t soda about 2½ C flour pinch salt ½ C raisins (chopped fine) Filling Then add vinegar to taste 1/4 C sugar ½ t flour (dates or figs may be used) ¼ C water Cook until it boils.
Roll dough very thin and cut with any shaped cookie cutter desired. Place in the center of each cookie a spoonful of the filling, place another cookie on top with edges even. Press edges together and bake. Mrs. J. E. Triggs. 1/2 C butter 1 C boiling water 1 C flour
A filled rolled cookie of the type that turned up at every church supper in the early twentieth century. The recipe assumes you know how thick a rolled cookie should be and how hot your oven runs, so the numbers below fill in the gaps.
- Oven and timeNone is given. Bake at 375F for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are set and just colouring; the filling is already cooked, so you are only baking the dough.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the soured milk or buttermilk used in other recipes of the period. Do not substitute buttermilk here, since the leavening is already balanced with cream of tartar.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether these are homemade baking powder. If you would rather use commercial baking powder, roughly 4 teaspoons is the nearest equivalent to the 2 teaspoons cream of tartar plus 1 teaspoon soda, though such conversions are approximate; keep the pinch of salt as written.
- Butter or lardLard gives a shorter, more tender cookie and rolls thinner without tearing; butter gives more flavour and slightly more spread. Either works, and half of each is a reasonable compromise.
- The flour is deliberately vague"About 2 1/2 C" means add until the dough is firm enough to roll thin without sticking. Chill it for an hour before rolling; that matters more than the exact quantity.
- Filling proportionsThe filling amounts in this printing are unreliable. Working from the standard version of this cookie, the sense is chopped raisins with about 1/4 cup sugar, a spoonful of flour to thicken, and about 1/4 cup water, cooked until it boils and thickens to a jam. The vinegar is a small splash for brightness, not a measured amount.
- AssemblyRoll thin, keep the filling to a scant teaspoon, and seal the edges firmly with a fork or your fingertips. Cut a small vent in the top round or the steam will split the seam in the oven.
- YieldDepending on cutter size, this makes roughly two to three dozen filled cookies, using two rounds of dough for each.
Filled cookies like these were often found in the compiled community cookbooks of the period, in which a volume of this kind gathered whatever each contributing member was known for. Raisins, dates and figs were the practical fruits for such a filling: all three were dried, shelf-stable and available from the grocer year-round in an era when fresh fruit was seasonal, and the recipe's casual "dates or figs may be used" reflects that they were treated as interchangeable pantry sweeteners. The dash of vinegar is an old trick in cooked fruit fillings, cutting the flatness of concentrated dried-fruit sugar much as lemon juice would in a modern kitchen.