Last night I got a wild hair to make some cookies, well past cookie making time, into get everyone into bed time in fact. The jar o' chocolate chips was running a little low and I wasn't in the mood for sugar cookies or snickerdoodles so I did a what-the-heck websearch and landed on a recipe that looked promising. And boys howdy was it. Yum. I mean YUM. They came out of the oven long after the kids were asleep (that one hour wait is crucial I think, so don't skip it!) and Will had crashed our on the couch so it was just me and my knitting and my cookie with a mug of eggnog (I know, I'm early on that one but it was just sitting there staring at me at the grocery store! I couldn't help it!) At some point Will must have woken up though and helped himself because there were several missing when I got up this morning.
If you like molasses cookies, make these. Tonight. They have that perfect chewy but crunchy from the sugar coating texture. It's been very hard not to eat a few this morning. The original recipe called for margarine but I'm just a butter girl so I substituted and I can't imagine that they could have been better with the margarine, so I'm sticking with it.Molasses Cookies
adapted from All Recipes
3/4 cup of melted butter
11/2 cup white sugar - 1/2 cup reserved
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups of all purpose flower
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
Beat butter, 1 cup of sugar and the egg until smooth, add molasses until well mixed. Fold in the flour, soda, salt and spices and chill for 1 hour.
Preheat your oven to 350 and pour the remaining 1/2 cup sugar into a bowl. Roll chilled dough into walnut sized balls and then roll in sugar. Place 2-3 inches apart on a lined cookie sheet and bake 9 minutes (you want them puffed up, starting to crack and just barely browning around the edges. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 15 minutes on the pan.
Makes 2 dozen