Writer’s giant cookies come with a personal request: Please don’t break

Certain aromas from the kitchen, especially during the holidays, evoke fond childhood memories as we engage in recreating special delights for our own families. I’ve always been a prolific cookie baker, especially at this time of year. One of my favorites is a soft, spicy, over-sized cookie that contains blackstrap molasses and, yes, lard. An old-time treat for sure, the recipe was handed down from my great-great aunt Clara Cole via my mother, Agnes Scanlon Schneider.

My mom, who lives in upstate New York, was always fond of her great-aunt Clara, and I feel fortunate to have a few recollections of her myself. Aunt Clara, already in her 80s when I came on the scene in 1955, was a diminutive, bent-over lady who used a cane to keep her balance. She wore lace collars accentuated with an antique brooch and tiny earrings in her pierced ears; her long snow-white hair was pulled back into a tight bun held neatly in place with copious hairpins.

When my mom was a wee lass growing up with six older siblings and one baby sister on the family farm, she was often pressed into service to keep Aunt Clara company — the visits made more festive with a batch of molasses cookies fresh from the oven. Mom tells how her great-aunt would keep an eagle eye on the cookies baking in the Red Cross cookstove, frequently testing each one for doneness, handily removing it from the hot cookie sheet with her fingers and immediately adding another one in its place. When my mom’s mother joined her on a visit, grandmother would take the cookie from my mom, break it in half and hand it back to her. Mom says it always made her sad to have the cookie broken in two.

When I hear this part of Mom’s story, I can easily picture a little girl with blond curls, her blue eyes misting. She never understood why her mother wouldn’t let her have the whole beautiful cookie all in one piece, yet she didn’t dare to complain or whine. She was a compliant child, and back then little girls didn’t do that sort of thing. Mom guesses her fastidious mother halved the cookie so there’d be fewer crumbs to sweep up, or perhaps grandmother thought the substantial cookie was easier to manage if there was a half for each of her daughter’s small hands.

No matter. Since that time, Mom, who is now 82 years young, has baked dozens and dozens of these cookies, sometimes as often as once a week, employing Aunt Clara’s cookie cutter and rolling pin, both well over 100 years old now. For nearly 20 years, she even baked the cookies in the very same Red Cross cookstove brought over from Aunt Clara’s and installed in our winter kitchen. She serves the dark, gingery cookies warm from the oven and, most importantly, completely whole. They are a hearty refreshment with afternoon tea, especially during the holidays, and we confess to rising early and making them for breakfast.

To this day, whenever my mother sees one of us break a cookie in half before eating it, she says she gets that same sad feeling she experienced as a little girl. She even goes so far as to explain to first-time visitors that the cookies mustn’t be broken in half — though sometimes folks forget in their quest to fit the enormous cookie into their teacup or glass of milk for dunking.

I always make these generous cookies for our family cookie swap, rolling them out with my grandmother’s rolling pin, one of my most treasured possessions. It just isn’t Christmas without them.

Blackstrap molasses can be found in the grocery store under the brand names Grandma’s or Brer Rabbit’s, or at your local health food store. Other grades of molasses will do, but blackstrap has the highest grade flavor and highest nutritional value. And in case you’re thinking that there’s no way you’d make anything containing lard, I want you to know it’s been used for baking and cooking for centuries, and believe it or not, has one-fourth less saturated fat than butter.

Aunt Clara’s molasses cookies

1 cup melted lard (cooled to lukewarm)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups blackstrap molasses

Mix the above ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon until blended.

Add and mix alternately with 1 cup sour milk* until well blended:

5-6 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking soda

2-4 teaspoons ginger, as desired

1-2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

Roll out to about 1/4- to 1/2-inch thickness on a floured board and cut out with an over-sized cookie cutter or 1-pound coffee can. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes (depending on size of cookies) on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Makes about 16 ENORMOUS cookies.

* For sour milk, add one teaspoon vinegar per cup of milk.