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Cry-Babies
1/2 pint (I cup) strong hot coffee 2 eggs 1/2 pint (I cup) molasses 1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar 1 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 2 teaspoonfuls baking soda 1/2 teaspoonful salt 1/2 lb. (I cup) butter 1 teaspoonful vinegar 1 teaspoonful powdered Flour ginger Frosting if liked Mix together the coffee, molasses, eggs well beaten, sugar, butter, spices, soda, salt, vinegar, and enough flour to make a drop batter. Drop with a teaspoon on a buttered baking tin, and bake in a moderate oven until ready. Frost them if liked.
A soft molasses drop cookie in all but name, filed here among the puddings. The ingredient list has been mangled in printing, so read it carefully before you start.
- Untangling the ingredient listThe stray words resolve into 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger and flour as needed. The line reading "powdered Flour ginger" is two separate entries run together in the original column setting.
- Half a pintA half pint is 1 cup, as the recipe itself notes. Half a pound of butter is 2 sticks, and half a pound of sugar is closer to 1 generous cup of granulated.
- The flour is up to youNo quantity is given because the batter is judged by feel. Expect somewhere around 4 to 5 cups for a batter stiff enough to hold its shape on a spoon but still soft enough to drop; add it gradually and stop when a spoonful mounds rather than spreads.
- Moderate oven350F. Small drops need roughly 10 to 12 minutes: the tops should look dry and spring back, and the edges set, while the centers stay soft.
- Butter and hot coffeeCream or melt the butter before combining, and let the coffee cool slightly so it does not scramble the beaten eggs. Adding the eggs to the sugar and butter first, then the liquids, gives a smoother batter.
- Soda, vinegar and molassesTwo teaspoons of soda is a lot, but molasses is acidic and takes most of it; the vinegar accounts for the rest. Mix and pan promptly, since the lift begins as soon as the acid meets the soda.
- YieldA teaspoon drop from this quantity of batter gives several dozen cookies. They keep well and soften further after a day in a covered tin.
- FrostingA plain water icing of confectioners' sugar with a spoonful of coffee or milk suits them better than buttercream, which slides off a soft molasses surface.
Cry-babies are generally associated with New England and Pennsylvania farmhouse baking, a soft molasses drop that turns up in community and church cookbooks through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often alongside comparable molasses cookies called joe froggers, hermits or soft gingers. The name is traditional and its origin is not documented; explanations offered over the years range from the cookies being made to quiet crying children to the way the soft dough weeps and spreads on the tin. What is clear is the economy of the thing: molasses doing half the sweetening, leftover coffee for the liquid, and soda plus a spoonful of vinegar in place of a commercial baking powder. Its placement under "Pudding Recipes" reflects the looser categories of older household books, where anything sweet and homely might land in the same chapter.