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Honolulu Hermits
1 cup shortening 1 1/2 cups sugar 3/4 pound dates, chopped 3 eggs, beaten 2 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon soda 1/2 teaspoon allspice 1 1/2 cups walnuts Cream shortening and sugar and add chopped dates. Stir in eggs, then dry ingredients, sifted together. Stir in chopped nut meats and drop from a spoon on a greased baking sheet. Bake in oven (350 degrees F.) for about 15 minutes. This recipe makes about six dozen.
A plain, reliable spiced drop cookie: the dates are creamed into the fat rather than folded in at the end, which is what keeps this dough workable without any added liquid.
- The hinge: no liquid at allThere is no milk, water or juice in the dough — every bit of moisture comes from the eggs and the dates. Chop the dates fine and cream them thoroughly with the shortening and sugar so they break down and distribute; large chunks left whole will give you a dry, crumbly cookie with wet pockets.
- ShorteningIn a book of this vintage "shortening" means vegetable shortening or lard, used by volume; one cup is a half-pint measure, about 7 oz by weight. Butter works and tastes better, but spreads more, so chill the dough 30 minutes if you want the cookies to hold their shape.
- Dates3/4 pound is about 12 oz, roughly 2 cups chopped. Buy pitted dates and check them anyway. If they are dry and hard, steep them in hot water for five minutes and pat dry before chopping, or they will pull moisture out of the dough.
- Soda without an acidA teaspoon of soda with white sugar and no buttermilk, molasses or brown sugar has little strong acid to react with beyond the dates themselves, so expect a cakey, mildly puffed cookie rather than a spread and crackled one. Substituting half the white sugar with brown sugar gives the soda more to work on and deepens the flavour.
- SaltNone is listed. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt with the dry ingredients if your fat is unsalted.
- Oven and timing350°F is given outright. Fifteen minutes is right for a walnut-sized mound; pull them when the edges are set and the centres still look slightly underdone, as they firm up considerably on the sheet.
- YieldSix dozen from this quantity means small cookies — a rounded teaspoon each, not a tablespoon. Scaled up to a heaped tablespoon you will get closer to two dozen and will need a few minutes longer.
- SiftingSift the flour, soda and spices together as directed. Older flour clumped, and while modern flour does not, sifting remains a reliable way of distributing a single teaspoon of soda evenly through 2 1/2 cups of flour.