When I was completing  my Colonial history project for A.P. US History class, I found a recipe for Pine Tree Shilling cookies. I found out that the Shillings were used as money during the mid-1700’s by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I took my two favorite things, history and baking, and combined them as one. (I did alter the original recipe to make the cookies taste better–less ginger, more cinammon.)

I was scared that I ruined the cookies when I took a sniff of the batter, and the ginger overpowered the spice smell. I still baked them to see what I needed to improve. Smells in the beginning will trick you because when I took the cookie sheet out, the results smelled like like ginger snap cookies. I brought them in for my history class and, of course, my Journalism class, and they loved them. I highly recommend this recipe. It is much simpler than the ginger snap recipes I have used in the past. They are easy to make, and they don’t take long to bake.

Yield: 3 dozen (depends on size)

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cool Time: 3 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 cups unsulphured molasses

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ginger

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. In a large bowl, cream together the molasses, sugar, and butter for about 5 minutes.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and salt, and blend into the cream mixture.
4. Pour out dough onto a long piece of with a little flour wax paper*. With your hands form the dough into a narrow log of about 1 inch in width. Wrap up the wax paper and and refrigerate for several hours up to overnight.
5. Once the dough it hard enough that you can still cut through, slice dough with a knife. The slice should be at least 1/4 inch thick**. On your cookie sheet lay sliced dough one inch apart and if you want you can put indents into the dough to make a shape. Sprinkle coarse sugar on the sliced dough.
6. Bake for about 8 minutes. Should be a little bit dark. The dough should have raised a little bit.
7. Let the cookies cool on cookie sheet for about 2 minutes. Then transfer to a cooling rack.