Spiced Molasses Cookies

Our neighbors gave us some fresh vegetables from their garden about a week ago (some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes). It was up to me to make something with them, so I made a light red sauce from scratch, pasta, and created a sort of white cinnamon sauce for the cucumbers. Delicious! But...we still had the basket. So James suggested I make molasses cookies to put in the basket to give back.

If you've ever had molasses cookies, it's a really old but great recipe. I was explaining to James how if you made sweets as fatty as God intended then they'd be rich enough that you wouldn't have to eat a whole ton of them. Then I thought for a moment and added, "...except for molasses cookies."

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these things! They're chewy and dark and wonderful. You can either make them spicier or plainer, and if you're me you make them extra spicy! Also if you're me you realize you didn't buy ground cloves and you have to get out the mortar and pestle and grind them yourself. Buh.

Very easy recipe: wet ingredients, dry ingredients, mix. The batter should be fairly thick, as there is molasses in there:

If you've never made these before, they are very large and flat. You need to remember this when you put them in the oven. Make them teaspoon sized, but give them LOTS of room; or conversely you can make the balls a bit smaller.

One thing to remember with cookies like these is that because they're so flat even 1 extra minute cooking can totally change the texture! If you want them chewy, put in for less time; crunchy, more. If they don't look done, don't fret....take them out and let them set a minute. If they're done, then they'll simply be chewy (which is the way I like them). If you're not pleased, put them in 1 minute at a time and check! I'm totally serious here....2 minutes can change them from perfect consistency to hard discs. I have a combination of the two in the basket below. :) And don't worry if they are hard; they'll still be delicious!