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Holiday baking season is in full swing. We’ve been waiting for one of our favorite recipes all year long: Joe Frogger cookies<\/a>. While it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ve never even heard of a Joe Frogger before today, rest assured, it\u2019s a cookie you won\u2019t soon forget. Beyond being wholly comforting and quite easy to whip up, the recipe has a history as rich as its flavor and as intriguing as its name.\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joe Froggers are molasses spice cookies with Colonial New England roots. Their distinctly warm, cozy flavor profile has made them a persistent favorite among those in the know and has allowed their popularity to expand further in recent decades.\n<\/p>\n Rather than being dropped by the spoonful onto prepared baking sheets, Joe Frogger dough is chilled and rolled before being cut into rounds and baked. It\u2019s likely that the cookies were originally sweetened exclusively with molasses, as molasses was notably less expensive than refined sugar during the 1700s. Modern adaptations rely on a balanced combination of molasses and brown or white sugar. In addition to robustly sweet molasses, Joe Frogger cookies are flavored with a combination of familiar seasonal spices\u2014ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice\u2014along with one rather unexpected ingredient: dark rum.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Lore has it that, in place of the warm water called for in today\u2019s recipes, seawater and rum were added to the cookie dough. This salty, boozy combination allegedly gave the cookies an exceptional shelf life.\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are varying accounts of the precise details surrounding the Joe Frogger cookie\u2019s origins, but all can be traced to a tavern owned and operated by Joseph and Lucretia Brown in the coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. According to Smithsonian Library and Archives<\/a>, Joseph Brown, known locally as \u201cBlack Joe,\u201d was born into slavery, his mother being African American and his father being a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, in 1750. The Marblehead Museum<\/a> notes that he was born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, before making his way to Marblehead to enlist with a company of militia soldiers around age 26. (It\u2019s generally assumed that Joseph was granted freedom because of his military service in the Revolutionary War.) Lucretia, born to former slaves, was a native of Marblehead and, according to local church records and Marblehead vital records collected by Marblehead Museum, married Joseph in 1794.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n In 1795, Joseph and Lucretia purchased (initially, just half of) a house on Gingerbread Hill that would become Black Joe\u2019s Tavern\u2014the acknowledged birthplace of the Joe Frogger cookie. The story goes that Lucretia Brown, also recognized as \u201cAunt Creese,\u201d serviced the sailor-dominant clientele of Black Joe\u2019s with hearty fare and beverages featuring, unsurprisingly, molasses and rum. It was in feeding her customers that Lucretia developed a tasty treat sailors could take in bulk to sea that would remain fresher for longer: Joe Frogger cookies.\n<\/p>\n Competing theories offer different explanations for the memorable recipe name. No one contests that the cookies were named, in part, for Joseph, but where did the Frogger surname originate? Some say that Joe Frogger dough was traditionally cooked in an iron skillet on the stovetop, and when the dough hit the hot pan, it would splay out like a frog\u2019s legs. However, the more common explanation is that the original Joe Frogger cookies were much larger\u2014about the diameter of the frog-friendly lily pads that occupied the mill pond adjacent to Joseph and Lucretia\u2019s tavern.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Darcy Lenz\/Allrecipes<\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n Chances are, if you enjoy gingerbread, you\u2019ll love a Joe Frogger. That said, it\u2019s worth noting that Joe Frogger cookies are generally softer and more molasses-forward compared to their more widely known cookie cousin. Although Joe Frogger cookies and gingerbread cut-out cookies share similar ingredient lists and preparation methods, their different textures and nuanced variations in flavor are due to the following distinctions.\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What Are Joe Frogger Cookies?\u00a0 <\/span> <\/h2>\n
The History of Joe Froggers <\/span> <\/h2>\n
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Joe Froggers vs. Gingerbread Cookies <\/span> <\/h2>\n
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