Home › Cookies and Small Cakes › Raisin Rocks
Raisin Rocks
1 cup butter or shortening 1 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon salt Flour 1 teaspoon ginger 2 teaspoons soda 2 cups molasses 1 cup seeded raisins Cook the butter or shortening, sugar, molasses, ginger and salt together. Stir the mixture until it boils and boil it five minutes. Pour into a bowl and stir in flour and soda sifted together until it is stiff enough to drop from a spoon. Add the raisins and drop from a spoon on to a greased shallow pan. Bake the rocks in a moderate oven (380 degrees F.).
A boiled-molasses drop cookie with no flour quantity given -- the dough is judged by feel, not measurement. Expect to work in roughly 4 to 5 cups of flour, adding it gradually until the batter holds its shape on the spoon.
- Let the syrup cool firstLet the syrup cool a little -- the recipe has you stir the flour straight into the hot boiled mixture, which is how these doughs were handled, but if you would rather not fight it, let the mixture stand in the bowl until it is warm rather than hot before beating in the flour and soda.
- Judging the flourStart with 4 cups sifted with the soda and add more in half-cup additions. The dough is right when a spoonful holds a mound and does not spread on the spoon.
- Oven380F is stated and is worth taking literally -- these are a moderate-oven cookie. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and the tops look dry; molasses and brown sugar darken deceptively, so go by set edges rather than colour.
- The five-minute boilBoiling the fat, sugar, molasses and spice together dissolves the sugar completely and drives off some water, which is what gives rocks their chewy, slightly candied texture. Stir throughout and use a heavy pan -- molasses scorches readily.
- Soda and molassesTwo teaspoons of soda is not a misprint. Molasses is acidic, and the soda both neutralizes it and provides the lift; it also darkens the crumb and softens the crust.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" meant raisins with the seeds removed, in the days when muscatels came with them. Any ordinary dark seedless raisin works; plumping them briefly in hot water and draining well keeps them from scorching on the pan.
- Pans and spacingA greased shallow pan means a rimmed baking sheet. Drop in walnut-sized mounds about two inches apart -- they spread moderately -- and line the sheet with parchment if you would rather not grease.
- YieldA large batch of small cookies. They keep well in a tin for a week and, like most molasses cookies, soften and improve after a day.
"Rocks" were a staple of American home baking by the turn of the twentieth century -- craggy, spice-and-fruit drop cookies usually built on molasses, brown sugar, raisins and often nuts; the name is generally taken to describe their rough shape. They belonged to the same thrifty tradition as hermits and fruit cookies: dense, well-spiced, sturdy enough to travel in a lunch pail or a mailing box, and sweetened largely with molasses at a time when it was cheaper than refined sugar. New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, the Butterick pattern company's magazine, whose household pages aimed squarely at the cook working without a scale.