Molasses Cookies

I love, love, love soft, chewy cookies of any kind, but molasses cookies have always been near the top of my list.  This recipe at Food.com is 7 years old and has 230 5-star reviews, so we can all agree it's the standard-bearer of soft molasses cookie recipes.


Most people that don't bake frequently won't have shortening laying around the house, and of course you can use butter, but if you really want your cookies to be top-notch go spend the $3 on all-vegetable shortening.  It makes them lighter and lets the more diverse tastes of the recipe come out, instead of getting bogged down in butteriness.

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup packed brown sugar.  Light or dark is fine, and each of course will make a different color cookie.  I actually used a mix of the two this time.

• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup molasses

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
Cream together shortening and brown sugar.  This is my favorite part (aside from the eating); I love the texture of the two ingredients together.


Stir in egg and molasses and mix well.


Fold in dry ingredients and stir.  I like to add each cup of flour separately, mixing well after each.

After the two cups are in, add the last 1/2 cup of flour, the soda and salt, and a teaspoon each of these 4 troublemakers:

All in, before mixing:

Done!  I'm left with a soft but crumbly mixture that needs to firm up:

So it gets covered with plastic or foil, and into the fridge for 1-2 hours.
Later, it was still crumbly, but the perfect texture for rolling up into little balls, which were eager for a white sugar coating:




9-10 minutes at 350F.  Be careful putting them in the oven, they will slide around!

On deck

They're looking pretty good!