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Special Hickory Nut Cookies
Cream 3 cups brown sugar and 1 cup margarine. To this add 1 cup boiling water. Sift together 5 cups pastry flour, 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add these slowly to first mixture, and stir in 1 cup coarsely chopped hickory nuts. Other nuts may be used in place of these if desired, but hickory nuts are especially good.
Chill the dough before rolling. Roll thin, cut in any shape desired, sprinkle with sugar, and bake on greased cookie sheets until well browned at 400 degrees. Makes 4 dozen.
These may be cut in strips 3 inches wide, and again across to facilitate the cutting process, instead of in circles.
A rolled molasses-brown-sugar cookie built on a very wet dough — the boiling water is not a mistake, but it makes chilling non-negotiable.
- Chill, then chill againAdding a cup of boiling water melts the margarine and leaves a batter closer to a soft paste than a rolled dough. Give it at least four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, and roll one quarter at a time keeping the rest cold.
- Pastry flourPastry flour runs about 8-9% protein, softer than modern all-purpose. To approximate it, blend all-purpose with cake flour (roughly two parts to one), or simply use all-purpose and accept a slightly firmer, snappier cookie.
- 400 degrees is genuinely hotWith three cups of sugar in the dough these brown fast. Thin-rolled cookies will be done in 6 to 8 minutes; "well browned" arrives quickly and burnt sugar arrives a minute later. Bake one test sheet first.
- MargarineMid-century margarine was a firm, partially hydrogenated block fat. Use stick margarine or butter, not a soft tub spread, which carries more water and will slacken an already wet dough.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is a wild North American tree in the same genus as pecan, and the nuts are seldom sold commercially. Pecans are the closest substitute in both flavour and fat content; black walnuts give a sharper, more resinous result.
- Rolling in stripsThe last line is the practical instruction. Roll the dough into a rough rectangle, cut 3-inch bands, then cut across into squares or diamonds — no scraps to re-roll, which matters with a dough this sticky.
- YieldFour dozen from five cups of flour suggests a fairly large cookie; the recipe never gives a size. Cut smaller and the count will rise accordingly.
- Sugar toppingSprinkle the sugar after the shapes are on the sheet, not before cutting, or the cutter drags. Coarse or sanding sugar holds its texture through the high heat better than granulated.
Hickory nuts belong to the older American pantry of gathered rather than purchased food: the shagbark and shellbark hickories grow across the eastern and midwestern United States, and the nuts were collected in autumn, dried, and cracked through the winter, a slow job since the shells are hard and the kernels sit in tight chambers. Their scarcity in shops may be why the recipe pauses to say other nuts may be used. The rest of the formula suggests household economy: brown sugar rather than white, margarine rather than butter, and a large yield from five cups of flour.