1 cup of molasses. 1/2 cup boiling water. 1/4 cup melted butter. 1 1/2 cups flour. 3/4 teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful ginger. 1/2 teaspoonful salt.
Put the soda in the molasses and beat it well in a good-sized bowl, then put in the melted butter, ginger, salt, and flour, and beat again, and add last the water, very hot indeed. Have a buttered tin ready, and put it at once in the oven; when half-baked, it is well to put a piece of paper over it, as all gingerbread burns easily.
You can add cloves and cinnamon to this rule, and sometimes you can make it and serve it hot as a pudding, with a sauce of sugar and water, thickened and flavored.
Ginger Cookies
1/2 cup butter. 1 cup molasses. 1/2 cup brown sugar. 1 teaspoonful ginger. 1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water. Flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon.
Melt the molasses and butter together on the stove, and then take the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe, and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin, and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the bottom of four shallow pans, lift the cookies with the cake-turner and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and sprinkle the tops with sugar.
Grandmother's Sugar Cookies
1 cup of butter. 2 cups of sugar. 2 eggs. 1 cup of milk. 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla. Flour enough to roll out easily.
Rub the butter and sugar to a cream; put in the milk, then the eggs beaten together lightly, then two cups of flour, into which you have sifted the baking-powder; then the vanilla. Take a bit of this and put it on the floured board and see if it ``rolls out easily,'' and, if it does not, but is soft and sticky, put in a handful more of flour. These cookies must not be any stiffer than you can help, or they will not be good, so try not to use any more flour than you must.
They usually had tea for luncheon or supper at Margaret's house, but sometimes they had chocolate instead, so these things came next in the cook-book.