Tuesday, November 10, 2009

TWD: Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

All this month, the TWDers are baking out of sequence. This week, I chose the Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies...mostly because I thought they'd be easy to throw together. And it didn't hurt that over the past couple of weeks, I've seen other bakers who've made these, and they look delicious! As you can imagine, molasses is a main ingredient in these cookies. Molasses isn't something I particularly enjoy, but I remember my grandfather eating molasses on biscuits pretty regularly. And I think my little sister likes molasses, too. But around here, we call it sorghum. As in, sorghum molasses. I don't know if I had sorghum molasses, but I know it was store-bought, so probably not. If you know what sorghum molassses is, and if it's any different from the molasses you buy at the store, please let me know!
Anyway, let's get to baking. This is the picture of all my dry ingredients. I love pictures of flour topped with spices. Here, we've got ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and...black pepper.
After mixing together the dough, you leave it in the fridge for about 30 minutes, because it's so darn sticky. After a quick chill, you pinch of little dabs of dough, roll into balls, then roll in sugar. After they've been placed on the silicone-mat lined baking sheet, you press them with the bottom of a drinking glass so that they're sugar-coated discs of goodness. Aren't they pretty?
When they come out of the oven after baking for 12-14 minutes, they're supposed to pretty much look the same...only darker and crinkly/cracked on the top. Except I didn't pay attention to the baking directions and put 12 on the cookie sheet instead of 9. So they spread like crazy and I got a few fairly good looking square cookies:
But most of them got mangled as I tried to wrestle them apart, so they looked like this:
No, they're not pretty, but they are delicious! These are simple little cookies to make, but I think they've got a sophisticated taste. They're "grown up" cookies, but I think little ones would like them, too. These are cookies that you could be proud to serve to company...which is a good thing, because I've got a disc of dough frozen in the fridge. If you stop by sometime soon, let's have some of Dorie's Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies!
Next week, you should be able to find the recipe on Pamela's blog, Cookies with Boys. She's the baker responsible for these delightful little morsels! Thanks, Pamela!

6 comments:

  1. LOL I had the same issues! Had square ones and mangled ones, did manage to save a few round ones though :) Glad you enjoyed them too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like square cookies, so I think that your squares are fabulous! It's hip to be square! I'm glad that you enjoyed these. I think that they're super tasty as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your cookies look yummy! I love cookies of all shapes and forms, yours look fun! =) Thanks for the heads up about the spreading, I'm baking this next week and hoping for the best!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nothing wrong with mangled cookies as long as they taste good. And these were good cookies. Glad you liked them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You are welcome! Thanks for baking the cookies with me. The mangled ones always get eaten first around here. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi, just got around to reading your post!

    "Regular" molasses is made from the juice of sugar cane. Sorghum is a different plant -- I assume it's used to make sorghum molasses. You could always check Wikipedia!

    ReplyDelete