Soft and Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

The last eight Decembers, I have made this recipe as part of my holiday baking. For the first few years, I really struggled with achieving that well-defined crinkle look. So I took the time to narrow down the right steps in order to get amazing crinkles on top of the cookie every time. Continue reading to find out how to make ginger molasses cookies that are as beautiful as they are delicious.

These cookies taste exactly how a ginger molasses cookie should, with a soft yet chewy interior. Two main components play a part in the flavour: the variety of spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, nutmeg) and the type of molasses.

Did you know that molasses comes in different varieties? The three main molasses types are fancy, cooking and blackstrap. The longer the molasses is boiled down, the darker the colour and more pronounced the burnt flavour becomes. Fancy molasses is the sweetest and lightest in colour and my preference for this recipe. Cooking molasses has more of a characteristic molasses flavour with a slightly burnt taste and makes a darker coloured cookie. Blackstrap is incredibly dark with a bitter taste instead of sweet and is not at all ideal for this cookie recipe.

Let me share with you all some general tips for baking cookies:

Use room temperature butter. It creams together with the sugar much easier then if it were still cold from the refrigerator.

Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl in between steps to make sure that every bit of dough gets mixed in properly.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet in small batches, mixing on low to start and speeding it up as the dry start to mix in. If you start the mixer too fast right after adding the dry ingredients, the flour will fly everywhere. Slow and steady to start. I usually don't spend too long mixing the dry; 1-2 minutes tops.

Find your oven’s sweet spot. Mine is the middle rack of the oven for these cookies. Each oven has different hot spots. Learn how to work with your oven when baking.

Line your baking sheet to prevent the bottom of your cookies from cooking too fast. I prefer to use a silicone baking mat.

The cook time per batch can vary depending on your oven as well as the amount of dough used per cookie. For this recipe I use a 1.5” cookie scoop.

A typical baking sheet can fit a dozen cookies in a three by four grid.

General baking tips are always great however, to nail that beautiful defined crinkle look in your cookies, make sure you also do the following:

Gently spoon flour into a measuring cup and level it. This means no extra flour is added to the dough to mess with the crackle.

Whisk all of the dry ingredients together. Do not sift the dry ingredients for this recipe, it will cause the cookies to over-crinkle - creating a ton of small crinkles but not the larger canyons that are more visually appealing.

Chill the dough for at least an hour before rolling out the cookies and baking them.

Use a thin baking sheet for best results

Now we have some tips for how to achieve a great crinkle look in your cookies; but what is actually causing these beautiful cracks? The crinkle occurs when the exterior of the cookie hardens in the oven before the inside has set. The interior continues to rise, cracking the exterior as it does. A thicker baking pan will take longer to heat up and transfer the heat. The exterior will then take longer to set and by the time it does, the interior is no longer expanding, resulting in very few, sub-par crinkles. The temperature of the dough is important as well if you want well-defined, canyon-like cracks in your cookie rather than cracks with bleeding edges.

My final baking tip when trying out a new cookie recipe is to always bake one on its own first to see how it cooks in your oven and to figure out what amount of time works best. I find nine and a half minutes works best with my oven. The bottom of the cookies have that nice, baked-brown color and the edges are just starting to darken. The cookies should have a nice crinkle at this point.

These chewy delicious treats can be stored in a closed container for at least a week at room temperature or they can be frozen for a couple of months for longer term storage. I've also had great success with doubling this recipe during the holiday season.

Just remember the above tips for the perfect crinkle every time.

For all the ginger molasses cookie fans out there, enjoy!