Joe Froggers

4⅓ cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1½ tsps dried, ground ginger
¾ tsp ground cloves
¾ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp allspice

¾ cup shortening (yellow, butter-flavored, optional)
¾ cup sugar
1 cup light molasses
1 tbsp rum extract
⅓ cup water (or use all rum for the water and tbsp of extract)
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Mix and sift first seven dry ingredients.
Cream shortening and sugar. Add molasses and rum extract.
Add flour mixture and water (or rum) alternately beating until well blended after each addition.
Wrap dough in foil; chill overnight.

Roll dough one-half at a time about ¼-inch thick. Cut with floured 4-inch round cookie cutter. Bake on lightly greased cookie sheets at 375° for 8-9 minutes or until just done but not browned around edges. Cool on racks. Store in airtight can or jar. Makes 2 dozen cookies.

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This recipe was found in a Sunday newspaper magazine (PARADE’s Test Kitchen) many years ago, probably the 1970s. This in the information about the original recipe:

“Next time you are planning a summer-time treat─serve “Joe Froggers”─big, delicious molasses cookies. They’re made from a recipe that is over 100 years old─the pride of one man, “Uncle Joe,” as he was know to the people of Marglehead, Mass. Since he lived on the edge of a frog pond, the cookies soon became know as “Joe Froggers.”

“After Uncle Joe died, his daughter gave the recipe to a fisherman’s wife, and soon most of the women in town were making the cookies. Children bought them for a penny apiece in a local bake shop and today they are served in the Publick House in the colonial village in Sturbridge, Mass.”