A ginger snap, in essence, with no milk or eggs.
We took a look at this kind of “enough-flour-to-roll-out” recipe when we looked at a more modern version of molasses cookies.
Visit that entry to see more iterations, but from that, here’s my suggestion: when you see roughly equal amounts of molasses, sugar, and shortening, but no egg, assume around a 4:1 ratio of flour to molasses. When you see egg, assume a 5:1 ratio. So here, I’d suggest trying four cups of flour.
From the box of A.D. from Lutz, Florida, by way of Pennsylvania in the 1940s, and originating in Ohio in the 1920s.
Molasses Cookies
1 cup molasses
1 cup sugar
1 cup shortening
2 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. soda in 1 cup of hot water
1 scant tsp. of salt
Make soft dough and cut with cookie cutter.
No-egg molasses cookies like this typically get baked at about 425 deg. for about seven minutes, and depending on the size of the cutters, will yield between 18 and 24 cookies.
For any of these “enough-flour-to-roll” recipes, a common variant was to roll balls of the dough in sugar, then press them into flat circles with the buttered bottom of a drinking glass.