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Raisin Rocks
1 cup butter or shortening
1 teaspoon ginger
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups molasses
Flour
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° F.).
A boiled-molasses drop cookie in the old ginger-cake family. The original gives no flour quantity, no baking time and no yield, so the cook is expected to judge all three.
- The flour is undefinedEverything else is measured; flour is simply "Flour." Expect somewhere in the region of 5 to 6 cups to reach a stiff drop consistency with this much butter and molasses. Add it in stages and stop when a spoonful holds its shape rather than working to a number.
- Let the syrup cool before the sodaTwo teaspoons of soda stirred into a mixture straight off the boil will foam violently and spend most of its lift before the dough is on the pan. Let the boiled mixture stand until it is warm rather than hot, then add the sifted flour and soda.
- Boil means boilFive minutes at a true rolling boil concentrates the molasses and sugar and is what gives these cookies their chew. Use a heavy pan and stir constantly; a molasses syrup at this stage scorches quickly and the burnt taste carries through the whole batch.
- 380F is deliberate380F is printed in the recipe -- it gives both 'a moderate oven' and a figure. Take it literally: 380F, or 375F if your oven only steps in twenty-five degree increments.
- Baking timeNone is given. Drop cookies of this size take roughly 10 to 12 minutes; they should be set at the edges and still soft in the centre, since molasses cookies firm considerably as they cool.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that they are present. Any modern seedless raisin serves. If they are dry, a brief soak in hot water and a thorough drain keeps them from pulling moisture out of the dough.
- MolassesTwo cups is a large proportion and dominates the flavour. Use ordinary unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter in this quantity.
- Pans and spacingA "greased shallow pan" is a rimmed baking sheet. These spread more than a creamed-butter cookie, so leave two inches between spoonfuls.
- YieldNone is given. This is a large batch, and how many it makes depends entirely on the size of the spoon. They keep well in a tin and soften further after a day.
Rocks were a standing category in American cookbooks from the 1880s onward: rough, lumpy drop cookies studded with fruit and nuts, said by tradition to be named for their appearance rather than their texture. This version belongs to the older boiled-molasses branch of the family, a technique inherited from ginger cakes in which the sweetener, fat and spice are cooked together before the flour goes in, producing a chewier, longer-keeping cookie than the creaming method. The heavy hand with molasses is characteristic of the period. The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published household books like this one for the same audience of home managers who bought its magazines, and the printed oven temperature here sits alongside the older language of "a moderate oven."