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Cocoa Fruit Cookies
2-3 cup butter. 1 cup sugar. 2 cups flour. 1/4 cup cocoa. 1 scant teaspoon soda. 1 full teaspoon cinnamon. 2 eggs. 1 cup pecans chopped. 1 cup dates. Cream butter, add sugar, sift the flour, cocoa, soda and cinnamon; to the butter and sugar add the well-beaten eggs and flour, then dates and pecans. Drop by spoonfuls into a well-greased biscuit pan and cook in moderate oven.
A plain drop cookie with no liquid beyond the eggs, so the dough is stiff and the mixing order matters more than usual. A few of the original's figures need translating before you start.
- "2-3 cup butter"Almost certainly 2/3 cup, i.e. about 5 1/3 oz / 150 g, the fraction having lost its slash somewhere between print and transcription. Nothing in the proportions supports two or three cups of butter against two cups of flour.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). At that heat these need roughly 10-12 minutes; they set at the edges while the centres are still soft, and firm as they cool.
- Biscuit panIn American usage of the period this generally means a shallow flat pan for baking biscuits rather than a tin of moulds, so a baking sheet serves. Grease it or use parchment, and leave two inches between spoonfuls.
- The sodaOne scant teaspoon with no buttermilk, molasses or sour milk has little to react with beyond the cocoa, so natural (non-alkalised) cocoa is the safer choice; Dutch-process is likelier to give a flatter cookie with a trace of soda taste.
- DatesA cup of dates means pitted and chopped, packed loosely; about 6 oz / 170 g. Soft varieties such as Medjool can clump, so toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour.
- ConsistencyThe dough will look dry when the flour first goes in. Resist adding milk; the eggs and the moisture from the dates are sufficient, and extra liquid turns them cakey.
- YieldThree to four dozen cookies from a tablespoon-sized drop. They keep four or five days in a tin.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for a Philadelphia readership in the years just after the First World War, having worked in wartime food conservation, and was used to recipes that stretched butter, sugar and eggs. This is a thrifty cookie in that mould: the fat is well under what a rich creamed dough would take, and the bulk and sweetness come from a cup each of dates and pecans rather than more sugar. Cocoa was cheap compared with block chocolate and easier to keep, and it appears often in cake and cookie recipes of the decade. Drop cookies of this kind, spooned straight onto a pan with no rolling or cutting, were quick everyday work.