Today our old cookbook recipe comes from a 1937 printing of Brer Rabbit's New Book Of Molasses Recipes. This molasses spice cookie recipe features potatoes. Potato Spice Cookies1 cup brer rabbit Molasses¾ cup shortening1½ cups hot riced potato½ tsp salt2 cups flour2 tsp baking powder½ tsp baking soda1 tsp cinnamon½ tsp cloves½ tsp nutmeg½ cup chopped datesMethod:Heat molasses and into it stir the shortening until melted, add the potatoes hot, then the dry ingredients sifted together and the dates. Mix well and drop by half teaspoonsful on oiled paper, spread on a baking sheet. Bake in a slow oven (325º to 350ºF) 10-12 minutes.#LeGourmetTV #GlenAndFriendsCooking #OldCookbookShowCheck out our Aviation and Flying Channel: https://www.youtube.com/glenshangarwelcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to sunday morning in the old cookbook show today we're going to make a recipe out of this 1937 cookbook briar rabbit's new book of molasses recipes and we're going to make potato spice cookies so in that pot i've got some potatoes boiling because we need to we need to boil those up and i'm going to get some molasses out i need about a cup now briar rabbit is still a brand that you can find in the united states today not available where we live or at least i've never seen it here where we live and i'm supposed to put the molasses into a pot and heat it up so i'm going to get this in here and get the heat on now while that's coming up the temperature we'll mix together the dry ingredients so i have here some flour to that i'm going to add salt baking soda baking powdercloves cinnamon and some nutmeg now a question i get often with a recipe like this where there's both baking soda and baking powder is why and so there was very little baking soda in this one and much more baking powder and for this recipe i don't know exactly what the recipe writer was thinking but for this recipe i would imagine that there's enough acid in the molasses to activate that much baking soda so that much baking soda goes in but the cookies require more leavening than that baking soda requires so the next easiest way is to put in baking powder rather than trying to find another acid to add to this recipe to put in more baking soda so i'm pretty sure that in this instance that's what's going on and it depends you know varies recipe to recipe whether that's true or not sometimes you just want to have baking soda not as a leavening agent but as a way to improve browning sometimes it just improves the browning so we're going to mix this together i can see that the molasses is getting a little bit warm i can kind of see the change in it so i'll give that a stir and yeah so it's it's getting warm nice and loose and i've just got this on sort of a medium temperature i don't want to get it too hot now the recipe asks for shortening and it wants the shortening to be put in with the molasses and be melted in now this is 1937 and 1937 is sort of at that point where language is changing prior to 1937 and indeed technically in 2021 the word shortening means any fat solid at room temperature that stops gluten fibers from chaining together so it shortens them shortens the fibers which gives you a better texture for cakes and cookies and a shortening is so it could be beef fat it could be pork lard it could be margarine it could be butter and some people will argue that butter point but i take it to mean butter as well or what shortening has come to mean in 2021 or later post world war ii a lot of people when they see the word shortening they just assume vegetable shortening something like crisco and that is just one of the kinds of shortenings it is a vegetable shortening and so in 1937 and prior to 1900 if you saw shortening it did not mean vegetable shortening it just meant whatever fat you had in your kitchen that was solid at room temperature and you could use any of those which is still true today i'm using butter because i had butter i could have used lard because i have lard i never have vegetable shortening in the house it's not something that i use for anything i don't like the flavor of it i don't think it brings anything to anything that i bake so i don't use it but of course you could use vegetable shortening if you wanted to and much is made about the varying water contents of the different types of shortening and that you should adjust the amount of shortening that you use or the other ingredients that you use to compensate for that varying water contentfor this cookie it doesn't matter really doesn't matter if you're if you're going to go to that length you're overthinking it t
