While Kim was baking Erin’s Lemony Buns…

…I was baking Erin’s Hermit Cookies, because I thought those went more with the theme of cold and snowy. Also, because Erin has excellent taste.

[I feel obligated to insert, at this point, that Hermit Cookies are molasses cookies with raisins. No one here seems to know what a hermit cookie is. Hmph.]

In any case, I finally baked Erin’s Hermit Cookies and, truly, they are what I have been looking for these past ten years. You see, my dad’s mail customers (he was a mailman with a route on the ritzy side of town) used to give him baked goods at the holidays, and this one older Jewish lady used to give him a tray-ful of Hermits. They were de-licious! In fact, I don’t think I shared those very well. I remember waiting every night for him to come home to see if he had the hermit cookies yet. One year, she was sick or out of town or something and I was disappointed because I thought I would have to forgo the Hermit cookies that year. Then, to my great joy and delight, he came home with his tray of cookies after the New Year’s. Hooray!

Flash-forward to a month or so ago when Erin forwarded another friend and I this recipe. I don’t know what took me so long to bake them; the ingredients are all things you’ll have in your house. Unless, of course, you’re like me and didn’t realize that you had about 10 raisins left in your cannister and so had to open about six of the lunch-sized individual boxes to meet your raisin quota. Ahem. You’ll need:

1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 cup + 2 Tblsp margarine
2 small eggs
3 1/4 cups flour (yes, you read that correctly)
1 1/2 cups raisins
1/2 cup molasses
2 rounded tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of allspice

Don’t you love those nifty terms like “rounded teaspoons” and a “dash” of something? It makes me think of my great-grandmother’s recipes. Actually, hermit cookie recipes are usually traced back to the late 19th century…not that my great-grandmother was that old. (I can hear her yelling at me and shaking a wooden spoon.) Now for the directions:

First, you want to soften the butter in the microwave in a large bowl (you’ll add ingredients as we go along). I’d put it in at 10-second intervals until it feels soft, but not melted. Then, add the sugars.

Cream those ingredients together (newbies: mix really well). Once that’s done, you want to add your eggs and mix those in.

In another medium (or largish) bowl, mix your flour, baking soda and powder, and spices.

Now you can add the molasses to your butter/sugar mixture. If you haven’t worked with molasses before, I would like to say that yes, it’s supposed to smell like death. Don’t worry – that goes away and it tastes wonderful. Mix that into the soup goop batter.

When you’ve done that, add the dry ingredients into the mess you just made batter. Mix slowly, but thoroughly. Once, I started stirring too vigorously and dusted my curtains. That are ten feet across the room. Yeah.

Once your batter is mixed, you can add the raisins. I don’t have a shot of this because I was in a hurry to get my mixture in the oven. Unfortunately, my batter seemed to have the consistency of peanut butter and I couldn’t imagine getting it to form into the logs you’ll read about in the next step. So I stuck the mixture into the fridge overnight.

That turned out to be a good plan. The dough was much easier to shape the next morning. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray two cookie sheets with Pam. (NOTE: make sure your cookie sheets have sides, because the dough will spread a lot. In fact, the only thing stopping them from taking over the planet will be the sides to the cookie sheets. Heed my warning, people.) Once the pans are sprayed down, divide the dough into two sections. Each section will make three logs. Build those logs up as much as you can, spreading them width-wise across the pan.

(There are better pictures at the original link, here.) The higher you build the logs up, the thicker (and tastier!) your Hermit cookies will come out. Trust me.

Bake at 375 for 13-15 minutes. DO NOT under- or over-cook them! The edges will seem a little crisp and the insides will seem a little underdone. That is the perfect Hermit consistency.

Enjoy! The recipe will yield 30-60 bars or cookies, depending on how big you cut them. I will warn you though it’s impossible to eat just one, so plan accordingly if you’re going to share!

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Tags: baking, cookies, Hermit cookies