In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine vegetable
shortening, brown sugar, molasses, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and
salt; heat until warm, mashing out any lumps. Remove from heat; while still
warm, stir in flour. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease cookie
sheets.
When read to bake, take only as much dough as you will need
out of the refrigerator. (Unused dough may be stored in the refrigerator as long
as a month - in fact, cookies are better if dough has "mellowed" for awhile.)
Roll dough on a lightly floured surface, using as little
flour as possible. Also flour rolling pin. Roll dough out paper thin (or as thin
as possible) and cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place onto
prepared cookie sheets.
Bake 5 to 6 minutes or until light brown. After removing
cookies from oven, with a clean soft cloth lightly brush off any excess flour.
Let cool on cookie sheet and remove when you can handle them comfortably.
Store
in airtight containers.
Yields many!
Questions from Bakers:
Question: Hello! I found your site and
figured I’d ask. I’m stumped — I do a lot of baking and I’m pretty good, but I
have been unable to master the *crisp* Moravian spice cookie. I use Crisco
Butter flavor shortening sticks and I follow recipes exactly because I’ve
learned a lot about cooking chemistry from previous mistakes. I recently read
about measuring shortening by water displacement method which I haven’t yet
tried.
I am currently
using a large aluminum pan with a 1” side as my cookie sheet—all my others have
warped (cheap) or are insulated sheets, which I figured would only exacerbate my
problem.
Answer: Using
a baking pan with sides is a problem as the edges keep the heat from
circulating as much as it should.
