The Ultimate Molasses Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you add too much molasses to cookies? ›

Doubling up on molasses softened the cookies significantly.

Molasses is a thick, goopy ingredient, so it wasn't a surprise that my dough came out on the stickier end of the texture spectrum when I used too much molasses.

Bake soft molasses cookies on a cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes. It's very important to not over bake the cookies or they will be hard and dry instead of soft and chewy. To check for doneness, open oven and gently push the side of a cookie with your finger or utensil.

Why don't my molasses cookies crack? Molasses cookie dough won't have those signature cracks on top if the dough is too wet.

Light, Dark, and Blackstrap Molasses

Light, mild, or baking molasses ($11; Amazon) is what you get after the first boiling process. It's the sweetest of all types of molasses, because it has the most sugar left in it. It's most commonly used for desserts like molasses cookies, cakes, and gingerbread.

Blackstrap molasses has a lead warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because the processing of molasses infrequently involves using a direct flame with coals that may contain a high amount of the caustic substance potash. The soil in which the sugar cane grows may also contain lead.

OVEN IS TOO HOT

Oven temperatures are a crucial factor in baking. If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

Chill the cookie dough.

Chilling cookie dough helps prevent spreading. The colder the dough, the less the cookies will over-spread into greasy puddles. You'll have thicker, sturdier, and more solid cookies. Whenever I make cookies, I plan ahead and chill the cookie dough overnight.

Texturally, gingerbread cookies are usually a bit thinner and less soft (depending on the recipe). One of the more obvious differences here is that gingerbread cookies are typically rolled out and cut into shapes and iced while molasses cookies are rolled in sparkling sugar.

Using Molasses in Baking

It's dark, dense, and comparatively dry, thanks to the lower moisture content of blackstrap. It's also bitter and salty, so there's nothing to temper the heat of the ginger, making it all but inedible.

Molasses makes these cookies from Dorie Greenspan delightfully chewy, so you'll want to replace it with another liquid sweetener who could accomplish a similar feat. Try honey or sorghum, a combo of dark corn syrup and brown sugar, or a combo of dark corn syrup and maple syrup.

Why is my molasses cookie dough so sticky? ›

Too Much Liquid

If there is too much liquid in the dough for the flour to absorb, the result will be a soft and sticky dough.

If green, unripe sugarcane is used, it is treated with sulfur dioxide first to preserve it. It can leave a chemical taste in the mouth, so we recommend looking for unsulfured molasses whenever possible.

Unsulphured molasses can be light, dark or blackstrap, as long as it hasn't been treated with sulphur dioxide. Most commercially produced molasses is unsulphured.

Grandma's Molasses is made of the highest grade sugarcane molasses that is unsulfured and contains no preservatives, artificial flavors or artificial colors. It's the secret ingredient for baking and cooking. Grandma's Molasses is a nutritious alternative to refined sugar that is also Kosher and gluten free.

The difference is in the molasses that makes brown sugar brown: It adds moisture and slight acidity, resulting in a moist and chewy texture.

Molasses serve several purposes in baked goods such as: Sweetening: contributing to sweetness, although with lower intensity than sucrose. Its sweetness decreases as color darkens. Flavor: providing a broad and complex range of flavors, from caramel to bitter notes.

Its flavor dominates if you don't use another ingredient to mask it. If you're using it in a savory dish, think about stacking flavors like chile, vinegar, and assertive spices into fatty meats. These will keep the robust molasses in check. If you're using it in a sweet dish, flavors like ginger will help to balance.

The most common culprit behind non-spreading cookies is too much flour. This may seem counterintuitive—after all, isn't flour a key ingredient in baking? Yes, but if you add too much flour, your cookies won't spread as they bake.