Hermits — The Bar Cookie That Tastes Like a Century Ago

A year. I've been writing this blog for almost a year. Fifty-one weeks of recipes and stories and the slow excavation of a life lived in Appalachian kitchens. I started this because I was afraid Betty's recipes would disappear. I kept going because something happened that I didn't expect: people listened. Not a lot of people. Not viral-video, million-follower people. But enough. Enough to make me feel like the stories matter beyond my own kitchen.

A woman from Letcher County wrote to tell me that my fried chicken post made her call her mother for the first time in two years. A man from Pikeville said the soup beans recipe was identical to his grandmother's and he cried making it. A teacher in Whitesburg said she reads my posts to her Appalachian studies class as primary sources. Primary sources. My soup beans are a primary source. Betty would find this hilarious and also deeply satisfying.

This week, I'm thinking about what it means to preserve something. The recipes are one thing — measurements, techniques, ingredients. But what I'm really preserving is the context. The why behind the what. Why soup beans on Monday. Why fried chicken for homecoming. Why stack cake for funerals. The food is the text. The life is the subtext. And the subtext is what makes the food worth eating.

In that spirit, here's a recipe I haven't shared yet: Betty's gingerbread. Not gingerbread cookies — gingerbread cake. Dark, dense, sticky, spiced with ginger and cinnamon and cloves and black pepper, sweetened with sorghum molasses. It's the oldest recipe in Betty's repertoire, handed down from her grandmother, who was born in 1892 and lived until 1973 and taught Betty everything she knew in a kitchen that had no electricity until 1948.

Half cup of butter, half cup of sugar, creamed. One egg. One cup of sorghum molasses. Mix together two and a half cups of flour, one and a half teaspoons of baking soda, one teaspoon of ground ginger, one teaspoon of cinnamon, half teaspoon of ground cloves, quarter teaspoon of black pepper, a pinch of salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, alternating with one cup of hot water (the hot water is important — it activates the baking soda and dissolves the molasses). Pour into a greased nine-by-thirteen pan and bake at 350 for forty minutes.

The result is dark as night and spiced like December and moist enough to eat without anything on it, though Betty always served it with whipped cream or a drizzle of warm lemon sauce. I serve it with bourbon whipped cream because I'm me and bourbon is always the answer. The gingerbread tastes like 1920. It tastes like a woman born before women could vote, cooking in a kitchen lit by kerosene, passing down a recipe that would survive two world wars, a Depression, a coal boom, a coal bust, and a great-grandson typing it into a computer in a house in Lexington that she never saw. That's preservation. That's what I'm doing here. One recipe at a time, one story at a time, one week at a time.

That feeling of continuity—of being a link in a chain that stretches back further than I can fully see—is exactly what pushed me to write this one down properly, with measurements and instructions that anyone could follow, not just someone who watched Betty make it a dozen times. The Hermits are actually a separate recipe from the gingerbread, but they come from the same place: that same molasses-dark, heavily spiced tradition that defined her kitchen. So here’s how I make them, Week 51, in a house she never saw, on a computer she never touched, for people she never knew.

Hermits — Heritage Molasses Spice Bars

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 22 minutes | Total Time: 37 minutes | Servings: 24 bars

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup sorghum molasses (or unsulfured blackstrap molasses)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup raisins or currants (optional, but traditional)

Instructions

1. Preheat and prepare. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan and line with parchment if you have it, leaving an overhang on the long sides for easy lifting.
2. Cream butter and sugar. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat the softened butter and sugar together on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Don’t rush this step — it builds the structure of the bar.
3. Add wet ingredients. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then pour in the sorghum molasses. Mix until fully combined. The batter will look dark and a little curdled — that’s exactly right.
4. Whisk the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, black pepper, and salt until evenly blended.
5. Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in two additions, stirring gently until just combined. Fold in the raisins or currants if using.
6. Spread and bake. Spread the thick batter evenly into the prepared pan — use damp fingers or an offset spatula. Bake 18 to 22 minutes, until the center is just set and the edges have pulled slightly from the pan. Do not overbake; these should stay soft and chewy.
7. Cool before cutting. Let the bars cool completely in the pan before slicing into 24 squares. They firm up as they cool and taste better the next day, when the spices have had time to settle in.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 138 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 23g | Fiber: 0.5g | Sodium: 88mg