Lassy Mogs Recipe

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 egg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour
1/3 cups chopped dates
1/3 cups raisins
2/3 cups pecan pieces

Starting with slightly cold butter, cream together butter with sugar. Mix in the molasses and then the egg. Sift together the dry ingredients and mix into the butter mixture in two parts, mixing until flour just incorporated. Stir in dates, raisins and pecans just until incorporated.

Place the dough into the fridge and preheat oven to 350F. While waiting for oven to pre-heat, line two cookie sheets. Once the oven has pre-heated, scoop out dough with an ice cream scoop and press down slightly with a flat bottomed glass, slightly moistened.

Bake cookies for 12-14 minutes one sheet at a time. Cookies will be slightly underdone. Cool completely on baking sheets.

Yields: 24 cookies

* Lassy and lasses are common short forms for molasses on the island. Mogs are small cakes made of flour, baking powder, butter, salt, etc. When sweetened with molasses instead of sugar, they are, of course, lassy mogs. Mog may derive from a British dialect verb that meant "to go slowly" because the little cakes rose slowly when baked. But Mog and Moggy were also dialect nicknames for Margaret in certain rural areas of the British Isles, so these cakes may simply be lassy Margarets.