Funeral Cookies

[packman]

Interesting custom - never heard of it:

Funeral Biscuits



Many of the original funeral cake, cookie, and biscuit recipes have been lost to time – as Jacqueline S. Thursby writes in Funeral Festivals in America, “The molasses cookies passed out to people attending funerals in parts of early America were so common as to nearly have been lost to history. They were so common that mentioning them in a history would be like mentioning that the sky is often blue.”

This not-too-sweet recipe combines a few elements of different early American and European funeral cookies – molasses, the butteriness of shortbread, and (optional) caraway seeds.

Ingredients

1 cup butter
¾ cup sugar
½ cup molasses
1 egg
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ginger
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (optional)

Instructions


Cream together butter and sugar; add molasses and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together the dry ingredients, then mix the dry ingredients with the wet. Cut in circles, and cook in a 350 degree oven 10-12 minutes.

Adapted from 365 Cakes and Cookies: A Cake or Cooky for Every Day of the Year, 1904

From article:

http://tablematters.com/2014/03/18/a-snack-called-death/

[elleng]

1. Sounds good,

but as we've had a few such services in the family recently, I'll have to omit the history when I share the recipe.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Any idea what sort of molasses?

Light, dark?

I tried out a recipe for gingerbread cookies that just said 'molasses', and I used dark molasses without knowing how much stronger it was - the molasses flavour was so overpowering as to make the cookies inedible.

[Auggie]

6. Possible answer here:

http://food52.com/hotline/4503-what-is-the-difference-between-blackstrap-and-unsulphured-molasses

[dem in texas]

7. My favorite is Grandma's Dark Molasses

It always taste fine to me, I use it in gingerbread and molasses cookies. I even use it as a flavoring, such as adding about 1/4 cup when making pumpkin pie and always add some when making barbecue sauce.

[northoftheborder]

3. tablematters link has a great article and recipe for:

Austin breakfast tacos

and.. in the funeral cookie dept. a recipe for lady fingers

[Freddie]

4. Pennsylvania Dutch Funeral Pie

Is raisin pie (raisins in a sweet sugar sauce with cinnamon and nutmeg) so-called because the filling is black and raisins are available all year unlike fresh fruits needed for pies before canned filling became available. Church funerals around here still often have the "church ladies" putting on a spread of homemade foods for the guests after the funeral.

[swimboy]

5. That spread of homemade foods is known in these parts as the repast

It's pronounced, RE - pass