Chewy molasses cookies with chocolate chunks and flaky sea salt sprinkled on top. These cookies are perfect for Christmas and won’t last long!
Have you ever tried molasses cookies?
Maybe you have but I know lots of people who haven’t. Molasses , or treacle as I know it, isn’t one of those ingredients that is used everyday in the kitchen. But the flavor that comes from molasses is amazing. I took my original molasses cookies and tweaked it a little by adding chunks of dark chocolate and a generous amount of flaky sea salt sprinkled on top. The end result is a chewy, malted cookie with an (almost) solid center of thick dark chocolate. These are good cookies.
What is molasses?
During the process of making sugar, the juice from the sugarcane is boiled down to create a thick dark syrup. There are three stages to the boiling process, light, dark and blackstrap molasses. This is the most concentrated version and strangely enough the least sweet. Molasses is also added to sugar to make brown sugar and get that familiar light and dark color.
tips for making great molasses cookies
- This dough does produce a better cookie after being refrigerated for at least an hour, so try and set some time aside for this step.
- After the cookies have been in the oven for 10 minutes, take them out and drop the pan hard on the countertop. This will create that slightly wrinkled edge and a soft chewy inside. After banging the pan, you’ll place the cookies back in the oven for another few minutes.
- Use an ice cream scoop to make sure every cookie is the same size and bakes evenly. Each cookie should be as close to 2 ounces.
- Molasses attracts moisture so you can still have amazing chewy cookies 3 days later. Keep them in a sealed container though.
more cookie recipes
Chocolate Chunk Molasses Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup dark brown sugar
- ½ cup regular sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup molasses
- 11.5 oz dark chocolate chunks
- sea salt for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper .
- In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices.
- Using a stand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars until creamy and light.
- Add the egg, vanilla and molasses and beat well, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
- On slow speed carefully begin to add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl.
- Mix on low speed until a dough forms.
- Add the chocolate chunks and mix.
- Transfer the dough to the fridge for an hour.
- Using a 2 ounce scoop, place scoops of cookie dough onto your prepared pan leaving about 1 ½ inches between each cookie.
- Bake in the oven for 10 minutes and then take the the pan from the oven.
- Give the pan a good hard drop onto the counter and then place back in the oven to bake for another 3 minutes.
- Once the cookies are done, sprinkle with sea salt and let set for another 5-7 minutes.
I made these tonight and they are fabulous. I hesitated to comment because I made a few modifications. But I feel like the heart of the recipe was intact. I cut the sugar a tad (maybe 3 TBSPs) because I realized I didn’t have quite enough molasses (just a smidge less than 1/4 cup) so I made the difference up with date syrup. I also didn’t have chunk chocolate so I used semi sweet chocolate chips. The chocolate chips were actually a bit too sweet so I know the dark chocolate would have been perfect.