Ginger Snaps from The Rescuers

It’s that time of year where everyone starts making (or just eating) gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses and I’m over here wondering why. Once you’ve got the gingerbread made you still have to decorate with icing and candy. I guess that’s half the fun? But it’s also twice the work and, as previously mentioned, I am quite lazy. Also my math probably doesn’t add up on the above analogy either. Making ginger snaps, on the other hand, is less work, requires zero icing and these cookies can be easily stolen from just about any orphanage kitchen.

Making ginger snaps is a great excuse to talk about The Rescuers and all of the problems that I have with this movie. This ranges from animals that wear clothes (and sometimes don’t, what are the rules in this Mouse World?) to the troublesome issues around country representation in the Rescue Aid Society. Of course, if you just came for my recipe (which, really?) you can skip ahead as this is pretty straightforward, please note: these cookies contain exactly ZERO catnip.

So let’s start with the obvious issues around the original Rescuers movie, which came out in 1977, and the “countries” of Arabia and Africa.

This was rectified in the Rescuers sequel, The Rescuers Down Under. I noticed countries like Ethiopia and Morocco were included. Fun piece of trivia, that more “progressive” movie is actually the first sequel movie that Disney ever made! Which seems crazy in our modern world of Cars 3, Toys 4 and Sleeping Beauty 5: Aurora Gets Her Groove Back. Anyway, Disney and uncomfortable movies from the past (cough, Songs of the South, cough) isn’t really something new.

But you know what people don’t talk enough about: what are the rules around animals wearing clothes and why is it so inconsistent? Should people be talking about this? Of course not, but I want to so I’m going to. For example, in The Rescuers Rufus the cat is clearly wearing spectacles. Fine, I guess he needs them to see and it signifies that he’s old and/or wise. The only other clothes he wears is a scarf. Many of the mice creatures wear pants, but this also appear to be somewhat optional since both Bianca and Bernard don’t wear them (don’t you hate pants?). Also, the dragonfly needs a sweater for some reason?

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup molasses (I like blackstrap molasses)
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. In a separate bowl combine flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. In a stand mixer, beat brown sugar and butter until well blended. Beat in egg, followed by the molasses. Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Cover and refrigerate the dough for 3 hours or even overnight. Remove dough from fridge. Shape into balls and flatten slightly on a a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

The cookies were quite good. If you want to have less “snap” you can roll them in granulated sugar before baking and then take them out of the oven a few minutes early to have softer, sweeter cookies. But now for the REAL discussion…at the end of The Rescuers, Penny is adopted, yay! While being interviewed on her experiences from the movie she mentions the “two little mice” from the Rescue Aid Society to the reporter that is interviewing her:

But Rufus the cat is right there and he’s wearing his spectacles! Does the reporter NOT see that a freaking cat is wearing glasses? I know this probably shouldn’t bother me, cartoons don’t have to make sense and all that. But it does bother me because either cats wear glasses and people notice and are ok with that or that reporter should ignore Penny and her terrible concept of grammar and start talking about how animals have optometrists now.

Comulence: 7 Devil’s Eyes out of 10

Ginger Snaps from: The Rescuers