Lily Wallace's Gingersnaps

This time of year, I find myself poking around old cookbooks, looking for Christmas in the smell of cinnamon and ginger, the feel of crust and dough and the taste of molasses.  I found it here in this fuss-free gingerbread recipe from my grandmother's 1946 Lily Wallace New American Cookbook.  If your ingredients are at room temperature so that the butter is soft, you could easily make this without a mixer, though it's nice to have one when working in the last of the flour. 

Tasty, Christmasy, old-fashioned tasting, and would probably roll and freeze well if you wanted to slice and bake a batch at a time.  A lovely tea cookie.

LILY WALLACE 1946 GINGERSNAP / GINGERBREAD COOKIES
(See my notes about making these crispy or soft, below.)

1 cup sugar
1 cup molasses
1 cup unsalted butter (at room temp)
1 egg (at room temp)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger (or more, if you like a strong ginger taste)
2 teaspoons soda
1/2 tsp salt (optional, my addition)

1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla

+/- 5 cups flour*
Sliced candied ginger (optional, for decoration)

Combine sugar, molasses, butter, egg, cinnamon, ginger and soda.  Mix well.  Add vinegar, vanilla, and flour one cup at a time, until you have a stiff, non-sticky dough. 

*The recipe just says "Flour to make stiff dough" without listing an amount, assuming that the experienced cook of the day would know what that meant and of course, have enough on hand.  I found 5 cups to be the right amount for a pliable and rollable non-sticky dough.  Use a little more for sprinkling when rolling. 

Roll very thin.  Cut with cookie cutter.  Bake in 325 degree oven, 10-12 minutes.  The yield for this recipe is about 72 1 1/2 inch cookies, or 48 larger cookies.

This makes a classic, gingerbread-tasting cookie that is easy to work with and would be a great recipe to do with kids.  Because I am a ginger fanatic, I would say that you could double the ginger in this recipe.  I also added 1/2 tsp salt. 

Experimenting with cooking times and resting times, I found that in my oven, 12 minutes bake time was perfect.  For crispy, gingersnap-type cookies, leave on baking sheet 2-5 minutes after removing from oven, then move to a cooling rack. 

For softer, gingerbread-type cookies, pull parchment off cookie sheet immediately and allow to cool on rack, or roll a thicker cookie to begin with.  Before baking, I decorated some with a piece of sliced candied ginger in the center of the cookie, some with a sprinkling of the ginger sugar at the bottom of the ginger jar, and some with a silver dragee in the center.  Did you know those things are made with real silver?  Weird.