Fall favorites

Mmm. Molasses cookies.

One of my favorite things about fall is cooking with warmer spices, like cloves and cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. One of my favorite things to make with them is molasses cookies.

To some extent, I am on a quest for the perfect molasses cookie. My freshman year of college, I had a roommate who worked with a woman who made wonderful molasses cookies, soft and chewy with just enough spice to enhance the cookie without overwhelming it. Rumor has it said roommate has the recipe, hidden somewhere in her own overflowing recipe file. If it turns up, well, I'm hoping to get my hands on it, but in the meantime I've got plenty of recipes to test.

This recipe for Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies comes from Bon Appetit, Nov. 2006.

In a bowl, whisk together 2 1/3 c. flour, 2 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp allspice and a very small pinch of coarsely ground pepper.

Then in my trusty electric mixer, I beat 12 tablespoons room temperature butter until smooth, then creamed in 1/2 c. of molasses and 1 c. of light brown sugar. When it was blended, I beat in an egg and scraped down the sides:

Next, I gently added the flour mixture on low, low speed. Adding flour to doughs and batters always makes me yearn for my mother's mixer, or rather, the pouring shield on her mixer. It's just a big plastic ring, with a sort of funnel on one side, but it keeps all the flour from foofing out when you try to mix it in. I have a pouring shield, but sometime between the late '70s and the late  '90s, some idiot decided it would be better if the shield came in two pieces. I think the idea was to make it easier to add ingredients, but it actually means the shield doesn't fit correctly and if you're not careful, it will fall into the batter. So now I rarely use the darn thing and just add flour very, very slowly.

When the flour and spices are just mixed in, the dough will be very soft and smooth. The next step was to divide it into two pieces, wrap each with plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour. Then I let the kids lick the dough off the beater.

After an hour (or more), I took out the smaller of the two hunks of dough. I preheat an oven to 350 degrees and lined a baking sheet with foil. Then I rolled small pieces of dough into balls and rolled those in a bowl of sugar.





Once I had a dozen balls of dough placed on the baking sheet, I flattened them with a juice glass. They didn't look very sugar-topped anymore, so I sprinkled some more sugar on them.

These were supposed to bake for 12 to 14 minutes; since I like my cookies on the chewy side I went for the minimum. They came out a little crunchy on outside and a little chewy on the inside.

THE VERDICT:  Not quite as chewy as I was hoping for, but not bad. That pinch of ground pepper adds a unexpected pfefferkuchen-like kick. Will and Keith enjoyed them, assuring me that I make a mean molasses spice cookie. These would go great with some vanilla ice cream. A keeper.