I was craving a rich, chocolate-y, molasses-y cookie recently and realized I didn’t have a recipe for one. I checked my favourite baking blogs, then Google and didn’t find anything that looked or sounded promising, so I took matters into my own hands! This conveniently coincided with my copy of The Perfect Cookie cookbook arriving at the library (shout out to living in a small apartment so I can’t buy all the cookbooks I want!). I dove into this book right away and immediately got excited by all the delicious recipes. The only downside was nothing met my criteria, so I decided to work on my own recipe. I found these to take on unique texture: relatively dense, almost fudge-y, but more cake-like, without the bread-y softness, but still a bit chewy. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Chocolate Molasses Cookies

Yield: about 30 cookies

Notes: I tested a few batches of these cookies and found they turn out the best when the cookie dough is at room temperature. You can still freeze the dough into balls and bake straight from frozen (just extend baking time by 3 – 5 mins), I just found baking from frozen to be slightly less chewy.

Ingredients:

Dry

• 2 cups + 1 Tbsp flour
• ¼ cup regular cocoa powder
• 2 Tbsp Dutch-process or black cocoa powder (if you don’t have this kind of cocoa powder then just add this as regular cocoa powder – your cookies may be a bit lighter in colour)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp cardamom
• dash of salt

Wet

• ¾ cup (or 12 tablespoons or 1.5 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
• ⅓ cup brown sugar
• ⅓ cup sugar, plus about ½ cup for coating cookie dough balls (optional)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ½ cup molasses

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, and sugar on medium high until light and fluffy (this should take about 4 minutes). Be sure to scrape down the bowl once or twice.
5. Turn off or reduce speed to low, then add the egg yolk and vanilla. Mix on medium-high to combine (up to 1 minute).
6. With the  mixer on low, drizzle in the molasses. Once you’ve added all of it, switch speed to medium-high until fully incorporated (about another minute).
7. With the mixer on low, slowly add the dry mixture until fully incorporated (About another minute). There may be some dry bits left at the bottom, try and mix this into the rest of the dough.
8. Pour the extra ½ cup of sugar into a bowl.
9. Portion roughly 2 Tbsp-sized scoops of dough (I used a small ice cream scoop) and roll into balls. Roll the balls in the sugar and arrange on lined baking sheets, spaced at least 2” apart. On a full-sized baking sheet, I managed to fit 5 offset rows of 3.
10. Bake in the preheated oven one sheet at a time for roughly 10-12 minutes. Cookies are done when they appear cracked and the edges have set.
11. Cool cookies on the pan for at least 10 minutes, then move to a cooling rack until completely cool.
12. Enjoy with a cup of coffee, hot chocolate, glass of wine, or whatever you feel like.

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