Brandy Snaps
1 pound of flour. 8 ounces of butter. 8 ounces of sugar. 2 ounces of ground ginger. Lemon extract to flavor. 1 teaspoonful of soda-rounded measure. 1 1/2 pounds of light molasses.
Rub the butter into the flour as in making short paste, and add the ginger. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and put in the sugar, molasses and extract; dissolve the soda in a spoonful of water and add it to the rest. Stir all together, drawing in the flour gradually while stirring. Drop this batter with a teaspoon on baking pans--they need not be greased-and bake in a slack oven. The snaps run out flat and thin. Take them off before they get cold and bend them to round or tubular shape on a new broom handle.
A commercial-scale batch from a bakery manual: about four and a half pounds of batter, enough for well over a hundred snaps. Halve or quarter it unless you are feeding a crowd.
- The hinge: the shaping windowThese must be lifted and curled while still warm and pliable, which gives you perhaps 30 to 60 seconds per sheet. Bake only four or five at a time, and if a batch stiffens before you get to it, return the pan to the oven for 20 seconds to soften them again.
- Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is 300 to 325F. Expect 8 to 12 minutes; the snaps are done when they have spread thin, gone lacy and bubbled all over, and the edges are a deep amber.
- Light molassesThis means mild or Barbados molasses (or golden syrup), not blackstrap, which is bitter and darkens the snaps to near-black. One and a half pounds is roughly 2 cups.
- SodaSoda is bicarbonate of soda, plain baking soda. A rounded teaspoon is the leavening for a full pound of flour plus two cups of molasses, and its job here is spread rather than rise.
- Spacing and pansThe batter really does run flat, so allow at least 3 inches between spoonfuls. The original is right that greasing is unnecessary, but parchment or a silicone mat makes lifting the fragile discs much easier.
- The broom handleThe recipe calls for a new broom handle as the cylindrical form. A wooden spoon handle, a 1-inch dowel or a metal cannoli tube does the same work; slide the snap off once set, after 20 to 30 seconds.
- No brandyDespite the name, there is none in the recipe, and none is expected. If you want the traditional filling, whipped cream flavoured with brandy is piped in just before serving, since the shells soften within an hour of being filled.
- StorageCool completely and keep airtight with a desiccant or in a tin; humidity turns them leathery overnight. They will hold their snap for several days if kept dry.
Brandy snaps are an English fairground and tea-table sweet, thin gingerbread wafers rolled while hot around a stick, and the name is traditionally explained by the brandy-flavoured cream that filled them rather than by anything in the batter itself, though this is tradition rather than documented etymology. Thin gingerbread wafers baked between irons are an earlier relative. The size of this batch points to a professional rather than a domestic kitchen.