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Filled Cookies
1/3 cup shortening 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla 3 1/2 cups flour 3/4 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder Cream shortening; add sugar, beaten egg, milk and vanilla; add flour, salt and baking powder, which have been sifted together. Roll out thin on slightly floured board and cut with cookie cutter. Place one teaspoonful of filling on each cookie, cover with another cookie, press edges together. Bake in moderate oven 12 to 15 minutes.
FILLING 2 teaspoons flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup chopped raisins 1/2 cup chopped figs Mix flour and sugar together; add water and fruit. Cook until quite thick, being very careful not to burn.
A standard rolled sandwich cookie from a baking-powder company pamphlet, where the leavening is deliberately generous. A few notes make it behave in a modern kitchen.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" here means 350–375°F. At 350°F the 12–15 minutes given is about right for a thin cookie; at 375°F check at 10.
- ShorteningIn cookbooks of this period "shortening" usually meant lard or a vegetable shortening rather than butter, which was normally named when wanted. Butter works, but the dough spreads a little more and browns faster - chill it before rolling if you swap.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to 3 1/2 cups flour works out to a little over a teaspoon per cup, about the modern general norm and on the generous side for a thin rolled cookie. If you want less lift, 2 1/2 to 3 teaspoons will still puff the dough.
- Chill the doughThe recipe sends you straight to the board. A rest in the refrigerator makes the dough easier to roll thin and to lift the cut rounds without stretching them.
- Cool the filling completelyThe hinge of the whole recipe. Warm fruit filling melts the fat in the bottom round and steams the seal open in the oven. Cook it, spread it on a plate, and let it go cold before assembling.
- Sealing the edgesPress with the tines of a fork or a fingertip dipped in water, and cut a small vent in the top round. Sealed cookies with a wet filling can burst along the seam as steam builds.
- Figs and raisinsDried figs sold today are often softer and moister than the hard dried fruit such recipes generally assumed. If yours are moist, reduce the water in the filling by a couple of tablespoons or you will be cooking it a long time to get it thick.
- Filling consistency"Quite thick" means it should mound on a spoon and hold a line when you drag the spatula through the pan. Thinner than that and it runs out at the edges.
- YieldRoughly 2 to 2 1/2 dozen filled cookies from a 2 1/2-inch cutter, depending on how thin you roll. The filling makes about a cup, so you will have more than the recipe's teaspoon-per-cookie needs.
The New Royal Cook Book was one of a long line of promotional cookbooks issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which built its business on cream of tartar powder and spent decades arguing in print - and in court - against cheaper alum-based rivals. The booklets name the brand in the recipes, as promotional cookbooks did. The cookie itself is older than the pamphlet: filled rolled cookies with a cooked raisin, fig or date centre were a familiar item in American home baking, valued because dried fruit kept year-round and a sandwich cookie carried well in a lunch pail. Commercial fig bars were sold from the 1890s onward on much the same principle, and home versions like this one appear in church and community collections of the period.