The Secret Ingredient for Chewy Cookies

Posie Harwood, who finds the best back-of-the-box recipes in the grocery store, confirms that molasses is the key to chewier sugar cookies.

Molasses sugar cookies. (Photo: Posie Harwood)

The flavor of molasses reminds me of spoonbread, a dish my mother made often when I was little. I’d douse the soft pudding-like bread liberally with a thick, syrupy stream of molasses. But other than those glorious spoonbread nights, the yellow jar of molasses sat neglected on the pantry shelf.

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Happily, I’ve discovered that sugar cookies are the perfect way to use up that lonely jar. You might expect these cookies to taste predominantly of molasses, but they don’t. Reminiscent of gingerbread, they lean on the classic fall spices that you’d find in pumpkin pie and apple cake. This family of warm, aromatic spices is easy to play around with. Don’t feel stuck to the ones I’ve listed, and know that any of the following can be used in whatever ratio you like best: cardamom, ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger.

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Molasses performs the same nifty trick that brown sugar will in baked goods, adding a firm chewiness to these cookies. “Crinkly” is an apt descriptor: The cookies are nearly crisp at the edges and though they are exceptionally chewy, they aren’t soft.

Related: Our Essential Chocolate Chip Cookie Guide

Molasses sugar cookies. (Photo: Posie Harwood)

When you bake the cookies, they will puff up impressively—don’t worry about that. As soon as they start to cool, they deflate. Weirdly, I always imagine them as enthusiastic kindergarteners, puffed and excitable in the summer heat, then turning crestfallen as the temperature drops come fall.

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It’s advisable to chill your dough before rolling and baking the cookies. Otherwise, the dough is sticky and hard to handle. A cookie scoop is helpful for uniformity when shaping the cookies, but you can also just roll them out with your hands or a large spoon.

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These cookies are excellent, but don’t take my word for it. My sister swears up and down that she doesn’t like molasses and refused my (repeated!) offer of cookies. I finally coaxed her into trying a bite and minutes later she made off with an entire bag of them.

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Now it’s your turn: Make these, freeze them for later, or use them to convert your friends into molasses fanatics.

Molasses Sugar Cookies

Adapted from Grandma’s Molasses

Makes 18 cookies

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
¼ cup molasses (not blackstrap!)
1egg
2 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon (I use Saigon cinnamon)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Turbinado sugar, for coating

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

By Posie Harwood.