- 3/4 cup shortening
- 1 scant cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup dark molasses
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Cream the shortening (I use half butter, half Crisco) with the sugar.
- Add the egg and molasses.
- Sift the dry ingredients together and add.
- Chill the dough for an hour or more, until fairly stiff.
- Roll the dough into balls and then roll the balls in granulated sugar to cover the surface.
- Place on ungreased cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room between the balls.
- Bake at 350ยบ for 12-15 minutes.
Ruth Goucher Shoemaker’s recipe box.
(4.00 out of 5)
A window in your oven is a big help in baking these. The balls melt, then puff, then flatten. There is a family argument about when these are perfectly “done”: Mother prefers a softer cookie (before the fall), I prefer a crisper, more “well-done” flavor (a minute or two after the fall). Without a window in the oven it always took me two or three cookie sheets’ full to get the timing right, but now I can watch for the cookies to “fall” and know that they’re about done.
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More on how this recipe got to us: Helene Russell, the wife of one of my father’s colleagues, would bring them. She must have used a 1/4 cup scoop–the cookies were enormous. I’ve never tried to make them that big…