Spooky Molasses Cookie Recipe

I’ve never had a molasses cookie in my life. I always liked the idea of a molasses cookie. There’s something very southern about it. It sounds like something a 50’s housewife would serve on a sweltering porch with curtains drifting out of open windows. That’s never been me, but that’s definitely buried in my lineage.

This October I decided it was time to give it a try for myself.

I took this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and made a few little changes: Seriously Soft Molasses Cookies. I added cardamom, added some decoration, and simplified the steps a little, but it's really hard to beat a good Sally recipe.

(Spring Roll is hoping I drop the whole plate)

Here's what you need:

Dry ingredients:

2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cardamom

1/4 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup packed light or dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup dark molasses: Grandma’s brand

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Other:

Granulated sugar for rolling the dough

White icing

Black food coloring

You'll also need a mixer (a hand mixer is fine, that's what I used).

I threw all the dry ingredients into a bowl and gave them a little whisk.

Set that aside for later.

Take another bowl and mix up all the wet ingredients until smoothish. Mine looked a little like oatmeal, but it was smooth enough. Put plastic over the top and throw it in the fridge for an hour.

This sounds very easy, but my first roadblock came when I realized I had no butter in the house.

Panic ensued.

I went to my neighbor's house, and she only had a little smidge of Irish butter. I texted another neighbor - she wasn't home.

It was time for more begging.

I knocked on my other neighbor's house and her mom, thankfully, offered me two generous sticks of butter.

I took the dough out of the fridge, made heaping scoops with my cookie scooper, rolled them in my hands until they were round, and rolled them in a bowl of granulated sugar. After 9 minutes in the oven, they came out sparkling and perfect.

Look how they sparkle!!

My favorite part of baking anything is always the decoration. So this time I decided to take some white icing and black food coloring to make some adorable ghost cookies!

The artistic part comes at the end, and I always recommend you do a test.

No matter how careful I am, I always end up with one wonky looking cookie - use it to your advantage!

Take that goofy cookie and practice your decoration a bit - make some mistakes, and then eat it as a sample hehe. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t turn out perfect, they’re all going to be eaten anyway <3

I put a spoonful of the white icing into a separate bowl and mixed it with black food coloring. I used a gloved finger to add the ghosts with the white icing, then I used a chopstick and a toothpick to add eyes and mouths to my little ghosts!

I gave three cookies to the first neighbor I bothered about butter and five to the neighbor that was so generous. I would have given more, but they're so freakin' good!! This recipe made 28 cookies for me. You could make more if you use the cookie scoop more accurately than I do haha.

Here's a free PDF of my version of the recipe:

Recipe.pdf

Download PDF • 3.00MB

Hope you enjoyed this spooky molasses cookie recipe! Let me know if you gave it a try - I would love to know how it went!

Thanks for reading!