Aunt Marie’s Chewy Molasses Cookies

The Best Chewy Molasses Cookies

For Christmas many years ago, my Grandma gave me a copy of a family cookbook that several of my second cousins had put together, highlighting favorite dishes that have been passed down over the generations.

The recipes are mostly traditional, for things like fluffy buttermilk biscuits, the perfect turkey giblet gravy, and split pea soup (with a ham hock thrown in for good measure), and tell a story not only of great Southern food, but of memories and love shared around our family tables.

These chewy, flavorful ginger molasses cookies were in there too, and come from my great-great Aunt Marie – a woman who, every morning, woke up early to make those aforementioned biscuits from scratch. Yes, really.

These instantly became some of my very favorite Christmas cookies, and I’ve made them multiple times every holiday season since. They’re wonderfully soft and chewy, sweet and generously spiced, full of cozy, nostalgic flavors, and I hope you’ll love them too.

About Our Family Molasses Cookie Recipe

For years – and dozens of batches later – I believed that this was an original family recipe. As it turns out, they actually trace back to a recipe printed on the side of Brer Rabbit molasses bottles from at least as early as the 1940s (and likely earlier), and originally called Molasses Sugar Cookies.

And, the majority of molasses cookie recipes on the internet – also called chewy ginger cookies or gingerbread cookies – follow this same formula. The original recipe called for melted shortening instead of butter, and while that ingredient may have largely fallen out of favor, the rest of the recipe remains mostly unchanged. Sometimes with minor tweaks, like creaming the butter or adding some measure of brown sugar. But generally, the ingredients, measurements, and ratios are the same.

And it’s not in fact, the original creation of my great-great Aunt. The true origin doesn’t seem to be mentioned often, and maybe this comes down to many of us having the same “secret family recipe”, passed down with attribution lost to history, dropping off with each smudged recipe card.

No matter the source – and I do still claim these cookies as part of our family’s recipe heritage – these are wonderfully delicious and nostalgic cookies, with just a couple of modern tweaks.

Why You’ll Love These Molasses Cookies

There’s a reason versions of this ginger molasses cookie recipe have endured, and been shared far and wide.

Though they’re unassuming little cookies, and maybe even look boring compared to more sprinkled and frosted varieties this time of year, they more than make up for it with a winning, chewy texture and tons of flavor, thanks to dark, sweet molasses, fresh ginger, and warming spices.

They’re crowd-pleasing, can be made in advance, and are great for gifting since they’re sturdy, easily packable, and last longer than other more delicate varieties (actually getting better the next day or two).

I’ve tinkered with the original recipe a little bit, enhancing a few ingredients, adjusting the recipe to gram measurements, and gotten really detailed and particular with little tricks for perfect molasses cookies, every time. But all the classic flavors are intact, and my version of the recipe stays very true to its delicious beginnings.

And while you can gussy up their sparkly, crackled tops with a dip in dark chocolate and a sprinkling of holiday nonpareils, I actually love these spicy molasses cookies best plain – especially the second day, when they become impossibly and wonderfully chewy, sweeter, and even more intense – perhaps alongside a cozy cup of tea or cocoa. Happy baking!!

Chewy Molasses Cookie Ingredients:

If you bake regularly, I bet you have all these ingredients in your pantry right now (with maybe just a special trip to the store for molasses and possibly fresh ginger). Here’s what you’ll need to make them:

• butter: we’ll start with a stick and a half of melted butter, for richness and an extra chewy texture.
• sugar: granulated sugar adds sweetness and gives these cookies their crackly tops. For even more sparkle, you can roll the dough balls in a coarse organic or sanding sugar.
• molasses: of course! Molasses adds moisture and gives these namesake cookies their classic and distinct flavor. I recommend using Brer Rabbit molasses if you can find it, but any unsulphered (regular) molasses will work!
• egg: to bind everything together you’ll need one large egg.
• vanilla: a teaspoon of vanilla extract is not in the original recipe, but I add it to just about all my baked goods, and love it here too.
• flour: all-purpose flour forms the base of these cookies. I highly recommend weighing your flour (and other ingredients) to achieve the best, most consistent chewy texture!
• baking soda: 2 teaspoons may seem like a lot, but it’s just what you’ll need for the perfect balance of lift and spread.
• salt: fine sea salt helps to bring out all the other flavors.
• gingerbread spices: ginger (both fresh and ground), cinnamon, and cloves add warming spice, and the traditional gingerbread flavors to these chewy cookies. I like lots of spice, but you can easily adjust to your own taste.

For all the exact ingredients and measurements, see the recipe below.

How to Make Molasses Cookies

These are pretty simple cookies to make, but there are some key steps that ensure perfect molasses cookies every time. Be sure to check out my best practices, below, too.

1. Gather all of your ingredients while you melt the butter and let it cool.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
3. Mix together the wet ingredients until light and creamy, then mix in the flour mixture until a thick dough forms.
4. Refrigerate for a couple of hours to let the dough rest and chill thoroughly. Portion into tablespoon-sized balls. Chill again.
5. Roll each cookie dough ball in sugar, and bake in batches until golden and crackly. Let cool a bit then devour!

For full instructions and notes, see the recipe card below.

Tips & Tricks for the Best Molasses Cookies

• Measure your flour by weight. A baking scale is a super useful investment, and this is a recipe where it really pays off. See below, what a difference even a couple of tablespoons of flour can make.
• Use a cookie scoop to equally portion your cookie dough so they bake evenly. You should end up with about 32-34 cookies.
• When in doubt, chill your dough again for a few minutes before baking. I like to portion out all of my dough balls first, pop them on a cookie sheet in the refrigerator, and bake them off in batches (8 per half sheet pan fits perfectly).
• Make sure your oven is running at the right temperature. Too hot and your cookies will melt and spread into pancakes, too cool and you’ll have chunkier, crack-free cookies. An oven thermometer is great for this!
• Bake one cookie sheet at a time on the middle oven rack. It takes a little longer, but I find I get the best results this way.
• It’s better to err on the side of being slightly under-baked, as the cookies will continue to bake and settle once they come out of the oven and cool.
• You can use a silicone baking mat (such as a Silpat), but I prefer using natural parchment paper sheets.
• If your cookies are looking a little wonky, and you’d like them to be perfectly round (they’ll taste delicious either way), give the edges a gentle scoot and shimmy with a 4 or 5-inch round biscuit cutter as soon as they come out of the oven.

A Note on Measuring Your Flour

When I adapted the original recipe to grams, I experimented quite a bit with how much flour to use. Eventually I settled on 2-3/8 cups (or 285g). And as you can see in the photo below, even a couple of tablespoons of flour can affect the results quite a bit, and underscores why a baking scale is a baker’s best friend.

The cookies on the left might look fine, but they have a cakier texture and muted flavor. The cookies on the right are suuuper chewy and tasty, but were finicky to work with and many of them spread too quickly in the oven. The center cookies are what we’re aiming for: perfectly chewy with cracks and dimples along the top, and all that classic, molasses cookie flavor.

Other Favorite Holiday Cookies to Bake Next:

• Peppermint Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
• Chewy Cranberry Dark Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
• White Chocolate OREO Cookie Balls
• Lemony Shortbread Squares
• Holiday M&M Cookie Bars