The holiday season is the perfect time for baking cookies. Whether your favorite is gingerbread, chocolate chip or the classic sugar cookie, there's nothing better than curling up on the couch watching 25 Days of Christmas and nibbling on a homemade cookie. Sometimes though, sugar cookies just come out too crunchy and let's be honest we all love a nice chewy sugar cookie doused in frosting and sprinkles, right? Maybe it's just us, but a chewy sugar cookie is definitely a melt-in-your-mouth favorite dessert.
With this one secret ingredient, you can now create perfectly chewy sugar cookies in every single batch. By using molasses in your sugar cookie recipe, you'll get the perfect texture, not too hard, not too soft. You might think the molasses would take over the flavor, but you'd be wrong. The molasses adds a hint of spices, almost like a gingerbread cookie, without going overboard. Molasses in fact plays the same role in cookies as brown sugar does in baked goods. It creates a crispy outer layer on the cookie and a chewy, but not too soft, center. This sugar cookie will seriously change your life and will have you ditching your old recipe for this one right away.
For the molasses sugar cookies you'll need 3/4 cup butter at room temperature, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1/4 cup molasses, 1 egg, 2 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg. Thanks Food52 for this one-of-a-kind sugar cookie recipe!
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar together until fluffy. Then add in molasses and egg and mix, occasionally stopping to scrape the sides.
2. Slowly mix in the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ground ginger and ground nutmeg. Blend until well combined.
3. Spoon one tablespoon-sized balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. If desired, roll the cookie dough balls in sugar before placing them on the baking sheet.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until the cookies and golden brown. The edges will be darker than the middle of the cookie, so don't freak out.
5. Let them cool then enjoy!
