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Ginger Snaps
1 cup molasses 1/2 cup butter or shortening 1 teaspoon salt 3 cups flour 1 teaspoon soda 2 teaspoon ginger Heat the molasses and shortening. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add to first mixture. Thoroughly chill, toss on lightly floured board, and roll out very thin. Cut as desired. The bowl containing the remaining dough must be kept in a cool place or it will be necessary to add more flour. Excess flour will make the cookies hard and unattractive. Put on greased baking-sheet and bake in a moderate oven (320-390 degrees F.) twelve to fifteen minutes.
A lean molasses dough with no egg and no sugar beyond the molasses itself, which is why it must be rolled paper-thin and kept cold. The recipe's own warning about extra flour is the point to obey.
- Chill is the hingeThe dough is soft and sticky at room temperature and the temptation is to flour it into submission. Divide it into two or three portions, keep all but the one you are rolling refrigerated, and roll between sheets of parchment if the board fights you.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe's 320-390F reflects the loose period sense of a 'moderate oven'; set the oven at 350F. At that heat, cookies rolled truly thin may be done before the 12 to 15 minutes given, so start checking at 8 to 10.
- Judging donenessMolasses browns dark and hides the visual cue. The snaps are ready when the surface looks dry and the edges are set; they crisp as they cool and will be soft coming off the sheet.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will not sweeten the dough enough on its own. Warm it with the fat only until the fat melts, then let it cool slightly before adding the flour and soda.
- Soda and the acidThere is no baking powder here; the soda works against the acidity of the molasses. Sift it thoroughly through the flour so it does not leave soapy dark spots.
- ShorteningButter gives better flavour, vegetable shortening a slightly crisper snap. Either works at the half-cup called for; the dough is deliberately low in fat, which is what makes the cookie snap rather than crumble.
- Baking sheetGreased sheets were standard then; parchment is easier now and prevents the molasses edges from sticking as they set.
- YieldSeveral dozen two-inch cookies if rolled very thin. Cooled completely, they keep well in a tin, and go soft if stored with soft cookies.
Ginger snaps belong to the long line of hard, keeping spice cookies that predate household baking powder: molasses for sweetness and moisture, soda for lift, ginger for warmth, and almost nothing else. The name is often linked to the sharp crack of a properly dried thin cookie, though the derivation is not settled, and similar molasses-and-spice biscuits were baked across northern Europe. Recipes of this type appeared widely in American cookery writing through the early twentieth century: they were cheap, they used a pantry sweetener rather than refined sugar, and they survived weeks in a tin. The care the instructions take over excess flour would have mattered most in a kitchen without reliable refrigeration, where a bowl of soft dough left on the table quickly became unmanageable.