Recipe Finder: Molasses sugar cookies

Nancy Corrigan of Baltimore was looking for the recipe for molasses sugar cookies that was on the Brer Rabbit Molasses jar. She had it for many years but lost it in a move, and she wants to make the cookies again.

Jesse Neumann of Whiteford, Md., sent in a photocopy of the rather yellowed label from the Brer Rabbit Molasses jar with the recipe that Corrigan was in search of. Neumann said she has been making the cookies for her family for more than 40 years. The recipe calls for shortening — not butter — which surprised me, but it might have to do with the vintage nature of the recipe. I baked up a batch using Crisco vegetable shortening and was very pleased with the result. The cookies were “delicious and so flavorful,” as the label promised, and had a wonderful chewy texture right out of the oven, then got crisper as they cooled. Don’t worry if you can’t find Brer Rabbit Molasses — any brand of unsulphured molasses will work just fine for this cookie classic.

Jean Flemming of Baltimore is in search of several recipes from her days as a student at Forest Park High School in the mid- to late 1960s. She said the food in the Baltimore school cafeteria was to die for — and probably a big reason why attendance was so high back then. She would love to re-create some of her favorites for her grandchildren and was hoping someone might have the school system’s recipes for the yeast rolls, peanut butter cookies, apple cobbler, peach cobbler or yellow cake.