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When I was about nine or ten, I went through an intense baking phase, and my parents were delightfully supportive. I made chocolate chip cookies often enough that I had the Nestle recipe memorized. I got an Anne-of-Green-Gables-style cookbook and tried new recipes like shortbread. Over several years, my main hobbies were reading and baking1.

But on top of that, my mom’s best friend also loved to bake. Every time we traveled to visit them there was always some batch of cookies in the oven, or on the cooling rack (or both). She’s the one that taught me the magic of using a Kitchen Aid mixer.

One of her staple recipes was for molasses cookies, also called ginger creams. She wrote out the instructions for my mother, and we still have the same recipe card 30+ years later.

Here’s what I love about this recipe card:

• handwritten by someone I adore and whose writing I know well

• the vintage stove illustration

• the small grease and molasses stains that show this card was pulled out and used

• the simple instructions. Nothing fancy.

Which is why I chose this recipe to highlight in Reluctant Spring, a novel that takes place in the Oregon Territory, in 1851, when the main characters would be doing most if not all of their cooking in a big stone fireplace, with limited ingredients.

FULL RECIPE for molasses cookies:

Mix:

• 1/4 cup soft shortening

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 small egg

• 1/3 cup molasses

Stir in: 1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1/2 cup hot water

Sift together and stir in:

• 2 cups sifted flour

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

• 1/2 tsp cloves

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Chill dough. Drop rounded teaspoons on lightly greased baking sheet.

Bake for 7 - 8 minutes.2

Reluctant Spring by A.T. Butler is book six of the Oregon At Last series of books. The characters in that novel enjoy molasses cookies several times; in their case they forage for wild ginger, but otherwise most of the ingredients would have been available in the Oregon Territory in 1851.

I haven’t been able to find research definitively about some of these spices, but let’s pretend Rebecca brought them all the way from Indiana if necessary. For example, nutmeg was planted in British colonies… maybe that means someone brought it in a wagon to the Oregon Territory too.