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Soft Moo Asses Cookies
1 C shortening. 1 C sugar. 1 C molasses. 1 T vinegar. 1/3 C cold coffee or water 1 level t salt 1 t cinnamon 1 t ginger 12 t cloves or allspice 3 C flour 1½ t soda dissolved in a little boiling water Beat shortening, sugar and egg well; add vinegar, molasses, coffee or water. Mix and sift all dry ingredients and add to liquid. Add more flour, if needed, to make very soft dough. Drop from teaspoon on a greased pan and bake in moderate oven about fifteen minutes. 1 C brown sugar 2/3 C butter 1/2 C cold water 1 egg
A drop molasses cookie of the church-supper type: soft, dark, and spiced, meant to be soft the next day too. The ingredient list as printed is out of order and incomplete, so read the whole thing before you start.
- Missing quantitiesMolasses and vinegar are both called for in the method but neither appears with a measurement, and no amount is given for the shortening beyond the 2/3 cup butter listed at the end. Comparable soft molasses drop cookies of the period use about 1 cup molasses and 1 tablespoon vinegar; treat those as reconstruction, not as the book's figures.
- The spice amounts"12 t cloves or allspice" cannot be right as printed. In recipes of this style the clove or allspice measure sits at or below the cinnamon and ginger, so a fraction of a teaspoon is intended; the exact figure is lost.
- Coffee or waterThe list gives both 1/3 cup cold coffee or water and 1/2 cup cold water. Use one liquid only, around 1/3 to 1/2 cup. Cold brewed coffee darkens the cookie and deepens the spice; plain water works.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F. Fifteen minutes suits the teaspoon-sized drop the recipe specifies; the cookies are done when the tops spring back and the edges look set, and they will still be soft in the center.
- Soda in boiling waterDissolving the 1 1/2 teaspoons soda in a spoonful of boiling water was standard practice with lump-prone soda and it still helps it disperse evenly through a stiff molasses batter. Add it last and bake soon after, since it starts reacting with the molasses and vinegar immediately.
- "Very soft dough"This is a drop batter, closer to thick cake batter than to rolled cookie dough. Resist the urge to work in flour past the point where it will just hold a mound on the spoon, or the cookies bake up dry and cakey.
- Pan and spacingGrease the sheet or line it with parchment. The batter spreads, so allow two inches between mounds.
- YieldSeveral dozen small cookies from three cups of flour, depending on the size of the drop. They keep well in a tin and soften further after a day.
Soft molasses cookies were the workhorse of American church and lodge cookbooks from the 1880s through the 1940s, and community collections of the kind often carry three or four competing versions in the same chapter. Molasses was cheaper than sugar, kept indefinitely in the pantry, and its acidity paired with baking soda to lift a dough with no other leavening. The touch of vinegar does the same work, and cold coffee, used here as a liquid, was a thrifty way to darken and deepen a spice cookie in households where the breakfast pot was rarely emptied. The generous ginger, cinnamon and clove reflect a spice cabinet that had become genuinely affordable by the early twentieth century.