Betty Crocker’s Christmas Cookies

Merry Christmas! It’s the time of year for spending time with family and friends, and for some of us, lots of baking. We have our holiday favorites: rolled sugar cookies, ginger snaps, pecan cookie balls (aka Russian Tea Cakes, aka Mexican Wedding Cookies, aka Snowball Cookies), and of course, pie.

This year, I pulled out Betty Crocker’s Cooky Carnival from 1957. Most of the recipes are excerpted from Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book. The book includes instructions for the whimsical carousel on the cover, but I was interested in the holiday options.

First up, a recipe called Stone Jar Molasses Cookies. These intrigued me because instead of starting with creamed butter and sugar, the recipe starts with boiled molasses. These were easy to mix.

• Heat one cup of molasses to boiling point
• Stir in 1/2 c. butter and 1 tsp. baking soda
• Sift together
  • 2 1/4 c. flour
  • 1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp. ginger
• Add dry ingredients to the wet mixture and chill dough

After chilling, roll the dough 1/16th inch thin, cut into circles, and bake for 5-7 minutes at 350 degrees.

I under baked the first batch, and they turned out leathery. With a little more baking, the second batch cooled into crispy wafers. I was skeptical of this recipe because it called for so much salt. The salt is noticeable, but not objectionable. They are not very sweet. The molasses flavor dominates, with a hint of ginger in the background.

Next up, sugar cookies. I’m partial to a rolled sugar cookie recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. I used that as my base, but took decorating inspiration from Betty Crocker.

The book had a few different options for using dyed dough. This one used a doughnut cutter to make multi-colored circles. Another called for twisting strands of dough into colorful candy canes that were topped with crushed candy canes at the end of baking.

I tinted some of my dough red and green. I tried a few circles, and rolled the rest of the dough into candy canes. Here are the final results. They’re not quite as elaborate as the photo spread in Cooky Carnival, but they were still a festive, tasty treat. I think Santa would approve.