Ginger cookies with molasses

Ginger Crinkle Cookies

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Day Nine of the 12 Days of Global Cookies –

Ginger Cookies with Molasses and Dried Apricot

Chewy Ginger Cookie with Molasses, Crystallized Ginger and Dried Appricots! These delicious ginger crinkle cookies bake up tall and full of spicy flavor!

Ginger has to be one of my favorite flavors on Earth. It can be used in both sweet and savory recipes for either a little heat or a big kick of it!

A good ginger crinkle cookie should be tall (NOT flat) and chewy inside. A couple of key ingredients and techniques help to make this the best recipe for ginger cookies with molasses!

Key ingredients for a chewy Ginger Cookie

Brown Sugar is one ingredient that can help a cookie bake up chewy.

The additional moisture in brown sugar helps to keep cookies moist and chewy. The increased moisture over granulated sugar is not able to evaporate during baking the way it would if only granulated sugar were used.

Brown sugar also offers a flavor boost over granulated sugar in these chewy ginger cookies!

Adding Molasses makes a chewy cookie

Molasses adds a warm and slightly bitter (in a good way!) taste to recipes. It can be a bit smoky and very robust!

What it does in a cookie recipe is attract moisture. It keeps the moisture inside the cookie – the moisture from the egg, the brown sugar and the molasses itself. This helps to make this the perfect chewy ginger cookie!

What is molasses, you ask?

Molasses is basically sugar cane that is boiled down for a long time until it becomes a syrup. The sugar crystals are extracted from the syrup, and the dark liquid that remains is molasses.

If you really don’t want the flavor of molasses in your recipe or if it doesn’t compliment your other flavors, substitute honey or corn syrup in it’s place. The effect on the texture will be the same without the smoky, slightly bitter molasses flavor.

A little extra Flour

I added 1/4 cup extra flour to my base cookie recipe. The additional flour was needed to offset the additional moisture from the brown sugar and the molasses.

Without the additional flour, these cookies would have spread more in the oven and not baked up as high and thick as they did. This creates my idea of the perfect cookie!

Chilling is key for a tall, thick cookie!

To keep the cookie from going flat in the oven, I chill it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. If you want to move a little quicker, you can freeze the dough balls for about 10 minutes.

Chilling the dough gives the butter a chance to solidify again. Baking at 375F (instead of the usual 350F) sets the outside of the cookie a little quicker once it goes into the oven.

This creates a taller cookie that doesn’t go flat!

This was meant to be a Triple Ginger Cookie!

When planning to make this cookie, it was meant to be stuffed FULL of ginger in three different forms – fresh, ground and crystallized.

So I placed a grocery order (we were under quarantine due to a positive COVID test in the house and couldn’t even go to the store) and I ordered fresh ginger root – the only form of ginger that I was out of.

Unfortunately, the shopper brought me fresh turmeric instead of fresh ginger.

I like to test my recipes several times before I put them on the blog.

Or, to be more honest, I wanted to have more cookies to eat!

But this test was done without the fresh ginger. I would add about one tablespoon of freshly grated ginger root if I had it and that would give these cookies a big ginger punch!

If only I had remembered that I have some ginger paste in the refrigerator….

The Final Touch of Flavor

Dried Apricots – sweet, chewy and fruity. Apricots are the perfect flavor companion to all of the ginger in this cookie!

I love the honey-like sweetness of apricots. That sweetness is a great contrast to the spicy, zesty flavor of ginger.

You don’t have to add the chopped apricots to these cookies but I highly recommend it. They add the perfect finishing touch!

12 Days of Cookies, Global Edition!

Check out the other cookie recipes that will be on my cookie tray this year:

Day One – Brown Butter Snickerdoodles

Day Two – Mint Brigadeiro

Day Three – Spumoni Cookies

Day Four – Classic Linzer Cookies

Day Five – Gingerbread Cookies

Day Six – Chinese Almond Cookies

Day Seven – Orange Cardamom Shortbread Cookies

Day Eight – Russian Pryaniki, still perfecting this recipe!

Day Nine – Ginger Cookies

Day Ten – Japanese Pocky modified for The NYT Cooking Recipe

Day Eleven – Plum Ginger Rugelach

Day Twelve – Alfajores

Extra! – Buckeyes aka Peanut Butter Balls

What is your favorite kind of cookie??

Ginger Crinkle Cookies
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Ginger Crinkle Cookies

Recipe by Tanya Ott
Servings

20

servings
Prep time

10

minutes
Cooking time

12

minutes

Ingredients

  • 280 grams (2 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour

  • 1 Tablespoon ground ginger

  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • 170 grams (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

  • 100 grams (1/2 cup) granulated sugar

  • 100 grams (1/2 cup) brown sugar

  • 1 large egg, at room temperature

  • 1/4 cup molasses

  • 1/2 cup crystalized ginger, finely chopped

  • 1/2 cup dried apricots, finely chopped, optional

  • To roll the dough in

  • 65 grams (1/3 cup) granulated sugar

  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

  • In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, baking soda and salt.
  • In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl and using a hand mixer, cream together the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until well combined, about 1 minute.
  • Add the egg and the molasses and mix until combined. Add the crystallized ginger and dried apricots, if using, and mix briefly.
  • Add the dry ingredients and mix just until combined.
  • Using a large cookie scoop, roll balls of cookie dough that are about 2 tablespoons each. Mix the sugar and ground ginger together in a bowl and roll each of the dough balls in it. At this stage, you can freeze the dough balls and store them in a freezer bag or container for up to 3 months.
  • Refrigerate the dough balls for about 30 minutes.
  • Preheat the oven to 375F.
  • Bake on a lined baking sheet for 12 minutes or until the edges are set and just beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for at least 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

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