Ingredients

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375 °F (190 °C, gas mark 5, moderately hot). Line a baking sheet with parchment baking paper, or lightly grease it.
2. Cream the butter and the sugar together.
3. Beat in the egg, then the molasses until fully incorporated.
4. Combine the cinnamon, ginger, salt, baking soda, and flour to make a dry mix. Stir the dry mix into the batter until it comes together into a dough.
5. Portion out walnut-sized balls of dough using a medium-size cookie scoop or two teaspoons; alternatively, roll a lump of dough into an inch-thick rope of dough, and then pinch off an appropriate length of the dough. Roll each ball in your hands to make smooth. If the dough is sticky, put it in the refrigerator to chill for an hour (or in the freezer for 15 minutes).
6. Put some plain white sugar in a small bowl, and roll each dough ball around until it is completely covered in sugar. Place the dough balls on the cookie sheet, spacing them out evenly.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. The cookies will be very soft and fragile when they first come out of the oven. Let them rest for a moment, and then use a flat spatula to move them to a wire cooling rack until they have finished cooling.

Notes

• You can substitute vegetable shortening or artificially butter-flavored shortening for some or all of the butter.
• Molasses is a very dark brown syrup. The most common brands in the US are Grandma's and Brer Rabbit, but any brand of molasses will do. Do not use blackstrap molasses, which is too bitter (check the ingredients label), and do not use sulphured molasses, which will have a chemical flavor. If you have to use blackstrap molasses, try substituting honey or a mild-flavored syrup for part of the blackstrap molasses.
• The raw dough can be frozen. The best way is to shape the individual balls of dough, then freeze them before rolling in sugar. The dough will thaw out faster this way than if frozen in a large lump. When the dough balls are mostly defrosted, proceed to rolling them in sugar.

Categories

• Recipes for cookies
• Recipes using butter
• Recipes using egg
• Recipes using molasses
• Recipes using granulated sugar
• Recipes using ground cinnamon
• Recipes using ground ginger
• Recipes using salt
• Recipes using baking soda
• Recipes using all-purpose flour