Soft & Chewy Molasses Cookies
Molasses cookies are the softer, chewier cousin of my gingerbread cookies. They’re a great and easy-to-make cookie option for your holiday cookie tray and with their deep sparkly crackles they look beautiful arranged beside sugar cookies and peanut butter blossoms. With their crackly sugared surfaces, slightly crisped edges, and soft, so soft, chewy interiors, these cookies are the treat to leave out for Santa if you have something particularly pricey on your wishlist this year. They’re brilliantly flavored with real butter (no shortening!), dark brown sugar, rich, sticky molasses, and, it bears repeating, lots of warm and cozy spices. While you may be eager to pop them in the oven right away, note that this dough does have to chill for at least 3 hours before baking. Not fun, I know, but the chilling is necessary to make the dough manageable (the molasses makes it a bit sticky!). Chilling also allows the flavors to really develop, giving you the best, most deeply flavored molasses cookies, so it’s worth the wait!
What You Need
Let’s chat about a few of the key ingredients that you’ll need:
Molasses. Use an unsulphered molasses, like Grandma’s brand (pictured above) or Brer Rabbit “Full Flavor”. Avoid blackstrap molasses–it’s too strong for this recipe and will make the cookies bitter.Brown sugar. I recommend using dark brown sugar here; it has a more intense flavor and color than light brown sugar (as it’s made with even more of that coveted molasses) . If you don’t have any on hand, you can use light brown sugar or make your own brown sugar.Cornstarch. Cornstarch is one of my favorite “secret ingredients” to use in cookies (I first used it in my “worst” chocolate chip cookies). It make the dough more stable and keeps the cookies from spreading too much on the baking sheet. While adding more flour could also help keep the molasses cookies from spreading, it would make the cookies cakier and more dry, while cornstarch keeps them soft, chewy, and tender. Spices. Classic, cozy winter flavors including ginger, cinnamon and cloves. These are the same spices used in my gingerbread, minus the nutmeg.
SAM’S TIP: You can either use a plain granulated sugar or a coarser sugar like turbinado for rolling the cookies before they bake. A coarser sugar will be nice and sparkly! Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Molasses Cookies
SAM’S TIP: Your molasses cookies should look slightly underdone when you pull them out of the oven–this is a good thing! They’ll finish cooking on their baking sheets outside the oven, resulting in a perfectly soft and chewy texture. Want more cookie recipes? Join my 12 Days of Cookies Email Series! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook I originally shared this Molasses Cookie Recipe 12/01/2017. Post updated (recipe remains the same) Dec 2022.
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