First Batch
I spent a rainy Saturday afternoon trying to replicate my Grandmother’s gingerbread cookies. At least I thought they were called gingerbread but now that I look at the recipe I guess she did call them molasses cookys :o)

I realized right away that I really didn’t know what I was doing and that we were going to be doing some experimenting so I started this log as a way of remembering for next time we attempt baking them.

Since our refrigerator went out a few weeks ago and we are living out of an ice chest, I had somGrma daisy molasses cookiese trouble coming up with the right ingredients. Really, it was just the oleo and we just had one egg. Since there is just the two of us I went with a half batch. Since we had no oleo and no real butter, I went with Lei’s suggestion, 1/4 cup Crisco and 1/8 cup “Land o Lakes” whipped butter and used the 1 egg Grandma had called for in a whole batch.

I remembered that they were supposed to have sugar on top, so I just sprinkled some on after I dropped the lumps on the cooky sheet.

Lei thought the first batch looked funny, once she mentioned it, so did I. We realized that they were supposed to be mashed down a little, Lei suggested using a glass with sugar on the bottom, we wiped a little Crisco on the glass to get the sugar to stick, but that batch came out too thin.

Daisy, in her younger days on Pinney Street

 

 

Last batch
The third batch was the closest to what I remember, thicker, softer and a little chewy but kinda cakey. I  just barely mashed them a little bit with the glass. But they don’t seem dark enough, next time I will have to use oleo, I can’t see that will make them darker but what the heck.
The last sentence on the recipe says that if you want to roll out and cut the dough, just use half the water, I feel like I remember making gingerbread men at least once, I wonder if this was the recipe.

Recipe by
Daisy Alice Dutcher Cummings

treee Daisy’s Family Tree