Do you love old-fashioned molasses cookies?
Kent's Mom is the most awesome mother-in-law. She has a constant stream of visitors at her house because everyone loves her and feels welcome there. Anyone stopping by knows that they'll always find cookies in her cookie jar: Kent's favorite oatmeal raisin cookie recipe, chocolate chip cookies, and my favorite: her old-fashioned molasses cookies. She must be making cookies a lot to always have them on hand like this, and she doesn't even like them herself! When our daughter needed to make a load of cookies for her home-economics class cookie exchange, she chose to make Grandma's old-fashioned molasses cookies. 🙂
Grandma’s Old-Fashioned Molasses Cookies
Yield About 3 Dozen
This recipe is from an old cookbook -- I put my own recipe notes next to the ingredients listed...
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup shortening (you could use this palm shortening, no-flavor coconut oil, or melted butter — pastured butter is best)
- 1 cup sugar (Use any natural sugar, I use palm sugar, and you could probably easily cut this amount a bit, but I didn't want to mess with the recipe the first time I made these.)
- 1 egg (pastured eggs are best)
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 2 1/4 cups flour (my favorite now is einkorn flour or you could also use a combination of sprouted flour, spelt flour, or whatever you like to use.)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- Cane sugar for the tops of the cookies
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350*. Mix butter, sugar, egg and molasses. (I used my Bosch because I made 4 batches at once!) Stir the dry ingredients together, and then mix those in. Roll dough into about 1″ balls, then roll in some sugar and place on a buttered stainless steel baking pan about 2″ apart — if you still have non-stick pans, line them with parchment paper. Bake about 9-11 minutes, depending on your oven and how crispy you like them. We like them chewy in the middle, so we only did about 9 minutes.
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Need more dessert or appetizer ideas for your Christmas parties?
- Desserts that are a *little* less unhealthy than most
- Appetizers – Every year I seem to make the same appetizer wherever we're going – this year it has been this:
- Avocado Dip with a Surprise Ingredient
- What are you bringing to your holiday parties this year?
Heidi Young says
Ohhhh! I absolutely love molasses cookies. I’ve never been able to make them though.
I may have to give it one more try……….
Samia says
The “molasses” cookie is your standard-issue SOFT-TYPE GINGER cookie. (Like ginger snaps but without the snap.) Wonderful, yes, but I have the same (or basically the same) recipe in my collection with the title “Ginger Cookies”. LOL. Old cookie – new name!
My old recipe did not call for sprouted flour, but I’ve used that in my baking since it came out in the stores. It works as well as plain white flour, but I am sure you know that. As to sugar, I use Sucanat. It is not as delicate as palm sugar but it adds to the earthy molasses taste.
I did not find that using melted butter is somehow better; I wonder why your m-i-law’s recipe specified that. Any opinion? Thanx.
KitchenKop says
Samia,
She actually used shortening, but I used melted butter — I’m sure softened butter would be good too! 🙂
Kelly
jmr says
I’ll be making these today. I have the same recipe and these are my favorite Christmas cookies. I plan to use a mixture of coconut oil and butter for the shortening. I don’t eat gluten so I’ve mixed up a gf flour blend that works well in regular cookie or quick bread recipes as long as I add an extra egg. Yum.
I did wake up this morning to a news story in L.A. about the dangers of raw milk and how dangerous it is for children because it has bacteria. The story reminded me I need to go to the store to buy some to drink with my cookies.
KitchenKop says
Hey maybe you would consider sharing your recipe and I can add it here for a GF option???
Kel
sue e. says
I love molassas cookies, and a few years back, a friend told me to try dipping them halfway in white chocolate. These are fantastic!! Trader Joe’s sells white chocolate chips without parially hydrogenated oil.
White chips without partially hydrogenated oils are very hard to find. You could try baking chocolate, too.
Ashley says
Perfect recipe. I’ve been wanting use up this molasses that’s been sitting in my pantry far too long. And I have all the stuff for it!
Jill says
Thank you for the timely recipe-my daughter was just wanting me to figure out when we could make molasses cookies for Christmas! I appreciate your notes to making it a “better for you” cookies ;0)
Have you used xylitol as a “powdered sugar” topping?
Have you ever used soaked flour for any cookie recipes?