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Filled Cookies
1 cup sugar 1 cup shortening 1 egg, well beaten 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup sour cream 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon soda Cream shortening and sugar, add well beaten egg, salt, cream and flavoring. Mix flour and soda together and stir well into mixture. Roll cookies very thin, putting two together with the following filling: 1 cup chopped raisins 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon flour 1/2 cup water Mix these together and cook for 5 minutes. Put a spoonful on the cookie, wet the edge of the cookie with milk, press edge together with fork, bake in hot oven (425 degrees F.) until brown. Makes two dozen.
A standard sour-cream rolled cookie with a cooked raisin filling sealed inside, of the type that dominated American church-supper cookie plates between the wars. The dough is soft and the ratio of fat to flour is high, so temperature control at every stage matters more than the short ingredient list suggests.
- Chill the dough before rollingOne cup of shortening to two cups of flour gives a dough that will tear rather than roll when warm. Refrigerate it at least an hour, and work with a quarter of it at a time, keeping the rest cold.
- Cool the filling completelyThe raisin mixture is thick and near-boiling when it comes off the heat, and warm filling will melt the shortening in the bottom round and leak through. Spread it on a plate to cool to room temperature; it stiffens considerably as it sits.
- The oven is genuinely hot425F is what the recipe says and what the thin dough wants, but it gives you very little margin. The recipe gives no time, only 'until brown'; for rounds this thin that is likely to be under ten minutes, so start checking early, and note that the sealed edges brown before the centers do.
- Sour creamIn an older kitchen the cream was often naturally soured and thinner than what comes in a tub today. Commercial full-fat sour cream works directly; avoid low-fat versions, which release water into the dough. Buttermilk can stand in, though it is thinner and may soften the dough.
- Soda, not baking powderThe teaspoon of soda is there to react with the acid in the sour cream. Sift it with the flour rather than adding it to the wet mixture, or you will get brown flecks and a soapy taste in spots.
- ShorteningMost likely vegetable shortening or lard, though the term was used loosely and could cover butter. Butter can be used but spreads more, so roll slightly thicker and expect a less crisp edge.
- SealingMilk on the rim and a fork crimp is a real seal, not decoration. Press firmly all the way around and cut a small vent in the top round if the filling is generous, or the steam will split a side.
- YieldTwo dozen finished cookies means four dozen rounds of dough. The recipe names no cutter size; something in the region of 2 1/2 inches would be about right for that count, and larger cutters need a proportionally larger spoonful of filling and a little more time in the oven.
Filled cookies of this kind -- two thin rounds crimped over a cooked fruit paste -- were a fixture of American home baking from the late nineteenth century onward, and raisins were among the commonest fillings because they kept in the pantry. The technique is essentially a small hand pie made with cookie dough. The pairing of sour cream with baking soda that leavens this dough belongs to the same tradition: soda was cheap and reliable, and any soured dairy on hand supplied the acid to set it working.