Cocoa Molasses Drop Cakes

Last week, I took another step toward becoming an official New Yorker (or at least a hipster New Yorker) when I stopped visited Strand Bookstore.  They claim to have 18 miles of new, used and rare books (not quite sure why they're using a length measurement for books, I would have gone with weight), and the place is packed with shelves and shelves of books (many far beyond my reach).

I immediately proceeded to the cooking section and was delighted to find tons of out of print cookbooks.  I left the store with a 1971 edition of the 1934 Hershey's Cookbook (I also picked up a couple of books on candy and cookies from an early 1980s baking series by Time Life).

I love that the subtitle says the recipes have been revised for "today's kitchen."  The first page literally begins, "Thirty-seven years ago, in 1934..."

The book cost me $7.95, which I initially thought was a good deal.  It's clearly not very common.  I mean, an iphone bar code app scan of this book yielded this (I have no idea how it got to that, I guess that's why free apps suck).  However, a little research told me I could have purchased the book for $4.00 used on Amazon.  Oh well.

My first endeavor in the Hershey's cookbook was Cocoa Molasses Drop Cakes.  I was immediately intrigued by the cocoa and molasses flavor combo and wanted to give it a try.

Cookie Stats:

Cookie:  Cocoa Molasses Drop Cakes with walnuts

These cookies have a nice cake-y texture.  I can see them being used as whoopie pie shells.  The flavor combination of bitter but robust molasses and rich cocoa-y goodness makes for a tasty cookie.

Daily Monku:  In 1999, Who Wants to be a Millionaire was the first TV game show to offer a $1 million grand prize.  The show single-handedly brought back the prime time game show. Today, twelve years later, game and competition shows are still a definite part of the network television lineup.  What I don't get is the fact that the grand prize is still never more than $1 million (unless it's some kind of special edition version [this of course excludes Jeopardy in which you could feasibly continue to win forever like that one guy]).  Shouldn't game show prizes be worth more now (I mean adjusting for inflation, $1 million in 1999 is equal to about $1.3 million today), especially given the ever more ridiculous things we make people do on television to win the money?