Cry Babies (1932)

No tears in this cookie for the busy, working woman

A lot of us nowadays like to think that women started entering the workplace in earnest in the 1940s, as an outcome of the US involvement in World War II. Truth is, this actually happened at least ten years earlier, and for many it was an outcome of The Great Depression. We see quite a number of cook books published in the 1930’s focused on recipes and house-keeping for the woman who is the chief homemaker and also has a job.

Mabel Claire was commissioned by Macy’s for one very popular book, straight-forwardly called Macy’s Cook Book and Kitchen Guide for the Busy Woman. In it, Ms. Claire explains that the book is “meant to show The Busy Woman how she may come home, purchase materials for a meal, and in a short time sit down to an appetizing dinner that has not taken hours to make ready.”

The cook book was praised for demonstrating not only efficiency in the kitchen, but also real craft in cooking. Many recipes incorporate ingredients to add a little something special – like this week’s recipe, which adds coffee to reinforce the flavor punch of these little cry babies.

Cry Babies (1932)

From Macy’s Cook Book and Kitchen Guide for the Busy Woman by Mabel Claire

Ingredients:

½ cup strong hot coffee

½ cup molasses

½ cup sugar

½ cup butter

2 eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

4 cups flour

½ teaspoon soda

For the frosting:

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

8 tablespoons thick cream

½ teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter with the coffee.

Add sugar, molasses and the well beaten eggs.

Sift the spices, flour, baking powder and soda.

Add to the liquid ingredients. Beat well.

Chill.

Drop in tablespoonfuls on a well buttered baking sheet or pan. Bake 10 minutes in a moderate oven (350 degrees F).

For the frosting: Stir the cream into the sifted sugar. Beat well. Add vanilla. Beat until thick enough to spread.

Frost cookies while hot. Makes 4 dozen cry babies.

Challenges and Changes

The instructions are fairly self-explanatory. This is mostly a mix-ingredients-put-on-pan-and-bake recipe, with a couple of exceptions.

First, I can definitely say that melting a half a stick of butter in a half-cup of hot coffee is NOT the best way to do it. It's just not enough coffee, and the butter chills it very quickly and then you have a bowl of cool coffee and butter lumps. I ended up putting the mixture into another bowl, microwaving it for a minute or so, and then everything was fine. It went against my credo to only do things that home cooks in the recipe’s era would have been able to do, but my alternative was to put the mixture in another pan and wait for it to reheat and I decided the outcome was the same so I saved the time.

Second, frosting the cookies was interesting. I did put an extra tablespoon of cream in the frosting to make it a good spreadable texture. Then, Ms. Claire tells us to frost them while hot, but you’ll note that this caused the frosting to just roll right down the sides of the cookies. This might have been Ms. Claire’s intention, but they didn’t look as nice as if they had only frosted tops. As the cookies cooled, I got nice tops on some and decided to let the rest cool for about 5 minutes and then frost them so they’d all be the same. I would recommend to let them all cool completely before frosting – in my opinion, they’re prettier that way.

Also, the recipe does indeed make 4 dozen cry babies. Truth!

The Ratings

Cookie Appearance: 8.1

Cookie Texture: 7

Cookie Mouthfeel: 6.9

Cookie Flavor: 7.7

Overall Cookie Rating: 7.6

Most of the raters this week liked the cookies - they weren't blown away, but they thought they were good. Appearance got the highest ratings, and a couple remarked that the frosting 'made' the cookies. The 'pretty good' scores for texture and mouthfeel relate to the spherical shape and almost cake-like texture: "like a cake ball." Several commented, "more like a cake" or "not a cookie." I think I'm going to have to write that philosophical definition blog post, "What is a cookie?" soon.

One rater mentioned they weren't fond of coffee or molasses, and they didn't like the aftertaste, and that's fair. If you don't like coffee, molasses, or strong spice, this isn't the cookie for you. A couple gave the cookie overall high ratings, so if strong spicy flavors are your thing, you may want to try these out.

I myself would offer one suggestion: instead of the teaspoons of cinnamon and nutmeg, I'd just make it 2 teaspoons of allspice. I like nutmeg but a little goes a long way, and thought that a more rounded spice blend would do quite nicely in this cookie.

Next week’s recipe: Waffle Hermits (1947)