These cute little cookies are perfect for holiday munching and giving.
December 2010 Update: Click here to for the big, soft, and chewy version of these cookies, made with (or without) raisins.
When I moved from urban Northern California to the wilds of Missouri (where I'd never been in my life) back in 1994, I dragged a number of things along with me that I will most likely never use again, but haven't yet been able to part with: my last few pairs of high-heeled shoes (absurdly out of fashion, I'm sure), a barely started sweater-knitting project and $80 worth of unused wool yarn, and over two dozen—now half-rusted—metal cookie cutters.
When I was a kid, several times each year my mother would dig out various cookie cutters and we would proceed to make what I still believe are the best rolled sugar cookies in the world. Each baked and cooled cookie was then carefully spread with buttercream frosting made using the recipe on the back of the C&H powdered sugar box, because I do not come from the type of people who would ever dream of making something as pointless and unpalatable as royal icing when you could use buttercream instead.
Last year I was talking to my mother on the phone while she and my stepfather were finishing up a batch of these very cookies. "Joel! You're putting on too much frosting and making the cookies look funny!" Then after a moment she gave an exasperated sigh, because the solution was painfully obvious. "Just
eat the extra frosting!"
The shape of the cutters and the color of the frosting we used depended on the season: we made pink hearts for Valentine's Day, yellow chicks and blue bunnies for Easter, and red & green stars, stockings, bells, reindeer, and Santa holding his sack full of presents for Christmas.
Sometimes we would go all out and decorate the frosted cookies with colored candy sprinkles or those tiny silver balls that you can still buy in places like England and Australia but which are now illegal in the United States.
When I grew up and became Head Cookie Baker in the household, I purchased my own collection of cutters, purloined the secret recipe from my mother, and proceeded to continue the frosted cookie holiday tradition.
Things have changed.
While I now happily spend countless hours
baking my own bread and
growing dozens of types of heirloom vegetables, I never seem to find the time to do all of that rolling and cutting and frosting.
Cookies should be round and sliced from a log or made with a scoop is my new motto. Needless to say, you will never find a single gingerbread man or woman or child or cat or snowflake lurking among the hundreds of holiday goodies I cheerfully churn out each December.
You will however, find lots and lots of these cute little round cookies hanging around my kitchen. Several years ago I did painstakingly make dozens of cheddar-dill crackers in the shape of penguins because I thought the recipient's kids would be amused by them. Little did I know the childrens' starving mother would inhale every single penguin while driving to pick up her little darlings from soccer practice without noticing a single one.
I was introduced to the world of dark and spicy desserts very late in life. Growing up, I cannot recall ever seeing a jar of molasses in the house—perhaps because it didn't go well with buttercream.
About ten years ago a friend offered me a square hunk of homemade cake that was a deep, dark brown but did not appear to be chocolate. My friend explained that it was gingerbread. Never one to pass up dessert, I took a tentative bite and could not believe what I'd been missing.
I begged her for the recipe and went home and baked my own gingerbread cake, substituting homemade applesauce for some of the butter and adding more spices. I soon learned that recipes for this stuff abound, and that some people even frost it with chocolate buttercream. Where had I been?
Then one day my hunky farmguy Joe asked me if I would bake him some spice cake but make cupcakes instead, because then more of the cake touches the pan and that, in his opinion, is the best part.
"You mean like gingerbread?" I asked.
"No, like spice cake."
Sure enough, on the same page as a recipe for Gingerbread, my trusted Betty Crocker cookbook offered a recipe for Old-Fashioned Spice Cake that did not call for molasses and met with Joe's approval.
I added applesauce and raisins to the batter, frosted the cupcakes using the recommended recipe for Caramel Frosting, and watched as
my approval rating went through the roof. According to the detailed notes I thankfully wrote in the margin, this happened in April of 2001.
A few years later I decided to try my hand at making spice cookies. I made them big and soft with raisins and the girl at the local natural foods store told me they were the best cookies she had eaten in her life. I made them small and crunchy and am now expected to bake up a large batch every time my mother comes to the farm, with survival packages of cookies shipped to her between visits.
The only difficult thing about this recipe is figuring out exactly what to call it. The cookies have all the makings of gingerbread, including molasses, but the original recipe mine is adapted from referred to them as spice cookies. A hopeful look through a random sample of older cookbooks on my shelf resulted in mass confusion.
I found recipes for Ginger-Sugar Cookies and Spiced Molasses Cookies and Ginger Snaps. In the
Joy Of Cooking there was a recipe for Old-Fashioned Molasses Cookies made with buttermilk that "are highly spiced." The Gingersnaps were described as "like 'boughten' ones in texture but with a dreamy flavor."
And then there were the Ginger Thins, which I immediately decided should be called Gnash Your Teeth Ginger Thins because you are expected to make "about 300 3/4-inch wafers" by putting "dots of 1/8 teaspoon of dough 1-inch apart on a greased cookie sheet." Right.
The most comprehensive list of recipes was in
The Settlement Cookbook, first published in 1901 and sporting the trademarked phrase, "The Way To A Man's Heart" on the cover of my 32nd edition from 1965. In the index under "Cookies, Spice" I found no fewer than twelve different listings.
There were Ginger Creams, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Wafers, Hermits (with raisins), Molasses Hermits, Card Gingerbread (which you make by thinly spreading the batter in a 9"x13" pan, sprinkling it with sugar, then cutting into squares after baking), Spice Cookies, and Raisin Spice Cookies (which were completely different than the plain old Spice Cookies), and Christmas Spice Cookies. There were recipes for Anise Spice Cookies and Springerle, which are also made with anise.
But the best find of my search came from a 1964 copy of
The American Heritage Cookbook And Illustrated History Of American Eating & Drinking (Number 2 in, I assume, a series) that I picked up for $2.00 at a used bookstore a few years ago but never read.
This is a cookbook with a sense of humor. Next to the recipe for Gingersnaps it says that "these Gingersnaps, Miss Harland instructed in
Common Sense in the Household, 'will keep for weeks,
if locked up.'"
Having found no right or wrong answer to my spice/snap/ginger/molasses cookie question, I decided to play it safe and include everything in the name of mine. Call these Molasses Ginger Spice Snaps whatever you like, just don't be surprised when they disappear quickly if they aren't locked up.
Click here to see the whole photo shoot.
Farmgirl Susan's Molasses Ginger Spice Snaps
Makes about 12 dozen 2-inch cookies or 2 dozen 4-inch cookies
Recipe may be halved—Adapted from a Diane Mott Davidson Goldy book
**Click here to print this recipe**
These cookies are delicious both large and small, and the little ones taste very, good with a glass of bubbly champagne. You can make them soft, or you can bake them a few more minutes so that they're nice and crunchy.
Everybody seems to have a favorite way of eating them, and even if you accidentally overcook a tray and believe that they are burnt, most likely there is somebody hanging around who will think they're perfect. If not, you can mail them to my mother.
I highly recommend investing in a couple of heavy duty rimmed commercial baking sheets; at about $15 each, they're one of the best kitchen deals around. I've been using some of mine for over 20 years for everything from
baking scones to roasting
Brussels sprouts, not to mention baking thousands of cookies.
Most molasses spice cookie recipes call for forming each cookie into a little ball. I never have the patience for that. It's easy to make perfectly round cookies if you portion out the dough with a stainless steel scoop. I own five or six different sizes and have had some of them for over 20 years, too. For these cookies I use a 2-teaspoon scoop.
The key to making really good spice cookies is to use the best and freshest spices you can find. If you can't remember when you bought that dusty jar of ground ginger or cloves, it's time to toss it out. Freshly ground nutmeg is wonderful, and whole nutmeg will last for years. Plus you get to use a cute little grater to make it.
As with most cookies, these freeze beautifully. They also stay fresh at room temperature for several days, making them perfect for holiday gift giving. I pack them by the dozen in little cello bags and tie with a colorful ribbon. I like the cello bags from
Continental Packaging Corporation. These are real cello bags (many are not), prices are reasonable, there is no minimum order, and they ship quickly.
As always, I urge you to seek out organic and local ingredients; they really do make a difference. If you prefer, you can substitute 2 sticks (1 cup) of the butter with natural, non-hydrogenated vegetable oil sticks, such as Earth Balance.
Ingredients:
1½ cups (3 sticks/12 ounces) organic butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup molasses (not blackstrap) or pure cane syrup (I use
Steen's)
4 cups organic all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Heat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer (I use a hand held mixer) on high speed for about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs and molasses until well blended.
Reduce the speed and mix in the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg until well combined. (You can mix the dry ingredients together first in a separate bowl, but I never do.) Stir in the raisins if you're using them.
The dough will be very soft, so put it in the fridge or freezer for a little while to harden up (very cold dough will take a minute or two longer to bake).
Use a a 2-teaspoon scoop to portion out the dough and place the cookies on a heavy duty baking sheet lined with unbleached parchment paper (this is wonderful stuff, and you can reuse the same piece for the entire batch of cookies). The cookies will spread; I can fit 24 small cookies or 6 large cookies on a half-size commercial sheet pan (approximately 13" x 18").
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