Tastes Like Vintage: Gingersnaps 1

Vintage spice tins by AppelJar

Ginger is a happy word. Gin-ger. It’s fun to pronounce and conjures pleasant associations. Ginger ale. Ginger beer. Ginger cats. Ginger jars (vintage of course). Pair ginger with bread and you immediately think lovely thoughts: tasty dense spicy cake, candy-encrusted houses, ornate summer cottages and cocky fairy tale boys who get eaten by foxes. Add the word “snap” to the tail end of ginger and you get a classic treat whose only competition for most cheerfully named cookie is the snickerdoodle.

Scandinavian gingersnaps are rolled thin and baked crisp. American gingersnaps are drop cookies, scooped by the spoonful into a little mound that flattens as it bakes, glistening with a thin veneer of granulated sugar. Like most drop cookies, they don’t require much fuss or fanfare to get them from mixing bowl to dessert plate. As if that weren’t enough, the smell of baking gingersnaps is relaxing, rich and honest–not perfumey like candles. Baking gingersnap with notes of fresh balsam is a signature scent Chanel should patent as Chanel No. 25.

Watty Piper’s The Gingerbread Boy by MunasTreasures

An easy-peasy and reliable gingersnap recipe comes from the Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook, new being a relative term. I can’t actually date the recipe since our little paperback edition has been reduced to a spine and pages in search of their missing covers. However, I do know it’s probably from the early 1980s. Like most BH&G recipes, it’s simple and straightforward and doesn’t require anything so obscure you have to order it on the internet.

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book by Vintageeclecticity

Gingersnaps

makes 5 dozen

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 1/4 cup sifted flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
granulated sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream shortening, brown sugar, molasses and egg until fluffy.

Sift together flour, baking soda salt and spices. Stir into molasses mixture.

Form into small balls. (I use a small cookie scoop) Roll in granulated sugar; place 2″ apart on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 12 minutes