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Brandy Snaps
(England.) Mix 1/2 pound butter, 1/2 pound brown sugar, 1/2 pound flour, and 1 pint molasses. Drop in spoonfuls in a buttered tin, and bake in a hot oven. Take out and put near the fire to dry. These are favorite cakes with school-children in England, and are crisp and curly when rightly made.
A very short set of instructions for what is really a lace cookie, and one where the proportions and the timing both need attention.
- The weightsHalf a pound each is 2 sticks (225 g) butter, about 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and about 1¾ cups flour. These three are consistent with each other.
- The pint of molasses is out of proportionTwo cups of molasses against 1 3/4 cups of flour gives a batter that is nearly liquid and will run together into one sheet. Traditional brandy snap batters use roughly equal weights of syrup, sugar, butter and flour; a quarter to a third of the stated molasses is closer to workable. If you follow the line as written, expect a pan of toffee rather than curls.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in this period is generally taken to mean somewhere in the 400-450F range, which risks scorching molasses before the cakes set. 350-375F is the practical range for thin syrup wafers.
- SpacingEach spoonful spreads to three or four times its diameter. Six to a half-sheet pan is plenty, and parchment is easier than the buttered tin.
- The hinge is the curling windowBake until the surface stops bubbling and the edges are set, 7-10 minutes. Let them firm for 30 to 60 seconds, then lift and roll each one around the handle of a wooden spoon. Too soon and they tear; too late and they shatter. Cakes that have gone stiff can be returned to the oven for a few seconds to soften again.
- "Near the fire to dry"This means driving off the last moisture so they stay brittle. A warm dry spot or a 200F oven for a few minutes does the same. Store them airtight the moment they are cool, as molasses is hygroscopic and they go leathery in an hour on a humid day.
- YieldAt full quantity the mixture is large by modern standards; even correctly proportioned it will make several dozen. Consider making a quarter batch first to test the spread.
- No brandy and no gingerDespite the name, neither appears here. Many English versions carry ground ginger and sometimes a little lemon; a teaspoon or two of ginger is in keeping if you want the familiar flavour.
Brandy snaps belong to the English fairground and treacle-shop tradition rather than the drawing room: thin syrup-and-ginger wafers rolled while hot, and generally traced to the same family of gingerbreads and "snaps" that filled market stalls through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The name is usually explained either by brandy in the earliest batters or simply by the snap of a properly dried wafer, though neither explanation is documented. Whatever the origin, no brandy appears in this version, and the instructions are brief enough to read more like a remembered description than a tested formula.