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German Chocolate Cookies
1 cup brown sugar 2 bars German chocolate ¼ teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon salt Grated rind ½ lemon 1 1/3 cups almonds, blanched and chopped 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking powder Beat eggs until light, add sugar, gradually, and continue the beating; then add chocolate, grated, and remaining ingredients. Drop from tip of spoon on a buttered sheet, and bake in a moderate oven.
A stiff almond-and-chocolate drop cookie, closer to a German Makrone than to an American chocolate chip cookie. The printed text has lost some numbers in setting, so read the notes below before you shop.
- The eggs are missingThe method begins "Beat eggs until light," but no quantity survives in the ingredient list. For a batter built on 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour and 1½ cups chopped almonds, three eggs is the plausible reading, but the original number is genuinely lost and any figure is a reconstruction.
- Quantities checkedThe printed page gives ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and 1 1/3 cups almonds, as our text now reads. Both are workable amounts for this batter. Note that the ingredient list omits the eggs called for in the method; two will do.
- What "German chocolate" meantNot the layer cake. In American cookbooks of this period it is generally German's Sweet Chocolate, a sweetened dark baking bar sold by Walter Baker & Co. Bar sizes varied, so "two bars" cannot be pinned to an exact weight; something in the region of 8 oz is a reasonable working assumption. If you substitute semisweet, the cookies will be a little less sweet.
- Grate it coldThe chocolate goes in grated, not melted. Chill the bars hard and grate on the coarse side of a box grater, working quickly so it does not smear.
- Moderate oven"Moderate" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375°F. As small drop cookies of about two teaspoons each they will want roughly 10 to 12 minutes — set when the edges firm and the tops look dry.
- Blanched almondsBuy blanched almonds and chop them by hand or pulse briefly; almond flour is too fine and will give a pasty crumb rather than the intended texture.
- The sheet"Buttered sheet" was the standard of the day. Parchment is more reliable here, since the sugar-heavy batter sticks and the thin cookies tear when lifted.
- YieldExpect about three to four dozen small cookies. They spread only a little, so an inch and a half between drops is enough.
The chocolate itself carries a name that has confused readers ever since — German's Sweet Chocolate was a Walter Baker & Co. product named for Samuel German, who worked for the company, and has nothing to do with Germany; the later "German chocolate cake" borrowed the same bar and the same misleading name. Whether the title here points to the brand or to a central European ancestry is not clear from the page, and it may well have been both. The recipe's sparseness is characteristic of its kind: an experienced cook was expected to know how large a spoonful to drop and how long a moderate oven needed.