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Redeeming Cookies

Despite the shaming brownie bite incident, I decided to persevere with my Christmas baking endeavors, and I am happy to report that the rest of my sweet treats were undoubtedly a success!

I began my second day of baking by making these delicious Molasses Cookies. I made the dough the night before, so it was good and refrigerated. This is something that can really make all the difference when it comes to cut-out cookies. On the blog where I found them, they are in the shape of maple leaves, but I made mine in the shape of Christmas trees. Below, find a chronicling of my adventure in baking molasses cookies.
I began by flouring my workspace. I use a large square of glass for all my cooking and baking prep. It stays nice and cool, and bits of food and germs don't get stuck in it like in wood or plastic. So there is a ball of dough. It was very, very cold. But it also looked totally delicious.

Here is a picture of the rolled out dough. This took some effort because the dough was so cold, and I can tell you that in the case of these cookies cold dough and a properly floured rolling pin were invaluable. As I rolled out subsequent batches I noticed the dough becoming stickier and stickier, so I had to re-flour the rolling pin between each batch. I worried that this might end up working too much extra flour into the dough, but it seemed fine in the end, so I won't worry as much about that next time.



After getting the dough rolled out, it was a simple matter of cutting out the cookies. I love this Christmas tree cookie cutter. It has a nice rubber grip on the top that makes pressing it into the dough really very comfortable. And it came right from Walmart! How about that? Anyway, it was at this point that I actually missed a crucial step in the process. I forgot to sprinkle the orange turbinado sugar on the top of the cookies before I put them in the oven. This ended up being okay though, because I remembered just a couple minutes into the cook time and added the sugar then. It didn't seem detrimental to the cooking process.

Here is a picture of the finished cookies. They puffed up a little bit, but they were firm and chewy, with just the right amount of sweetness. I definitely consider them a baking success, although next time I will probably line the baking sheet with parchment paper. It just keeps things cleaner all around.

This recipe was really pretty easy, and they baked/cooled really quickly.I haven't tested these beauties on my family yet, but I have a feeling that they are going to become a family Christmas staple.

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