Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Cookies ‘n contests
Kate has a contest, too. And just like Kris’s contest, which I hawked yesterday, she’s trying to bribe us with candy. Kate’s throwing in her new book and a $25 Barnes and Noble gift certificate, too. When I get pubbed, I’m going to send cookies.
Molasses cookies.
I’m grateful to Vons and Albertson’s that they no longer carry molasses cookies. Store-bought molasses cookies never were the shiznit, you know? Dry, chewy without being crispy, lean on flavor. A molasses cookie should be bold, full-bodied, complex. Spicy as a ginger snap, only edible.
So when my son got a yen for molasses cookies, I did what any real man would do. I googled “molasses cookies recipe” and picked the first one that sounded reasonable.
This recipe from About.com’s Southern Food section isn’t quite the shiznit, but it comes close; and if you read to the end, you’ll hear how we improved on an already good thing.
Ingredients:
* 3/4 cup shortening
* 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
* 1 large egg
* 1/2 cup molasses
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* granulated sugar for rolling cookies
Preparation is a piece of cake. Combine the brown sugar and the butter and whip with an electric mixer until fluffy. Beat in the egg and the molasses. In a bowl or plastic bag, combine all the dry ingredients. Now combine the dry and the wet, stir until homogeneous, and refrigerate one hour.
Preheat oven to 350 F. With a spoon, take out portions of the dough and roll them in your hands so as to make 3/4 inch balls (about 2 cm). Roll these in granulated sugar and place on a nonstick baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake for about ten minutes, then cool the cookies on a wire rack.
Now, for our palates, this cookie was still a bit lean on flavor. We thought it needed more molasses flavor and more spice. The texture was perfect, though: nice puff, a chewy center, and crispy edges. If only we could fix the flavor.
No easy way to get more molasses into these cookies, but someone (Karen? Jake? Me?) had a great idea. Instead of rolling the balls in granulated sugar, I rolled them in granulated sugar to which I had added healthy amounts of cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered ginger, and ground coriander (because why not?) How much? If you’ve ever made cinnamon toast, you should have a general idea of a good spice:sugar ratio. The sugar should have a tan color.
Rolling the balls in spiced sugar made all the difference. We still want more molasses flavor, but the spiciness was perfect.
Regarding the molasses: I’ll have to experiment with this. When I googled “substitute molasses for brown sugar,” all I could find were instructions on how to make brown sugar using white sugar and molasses. I may have to do the America’s Test Kitchen thing and make a few hundred molasses cookies in order to figure this one out.
Or I could write a letter to Cook’s Illustrated.
D.
I have a strictly cookies recipe book in CA…I’ll have to look at their recipe for Molasses cookies.I never used coriander…but the rest of the rolling mix sounds good.