Molasses Ginger Snap Cookies

I thought molasses was gross for a long time.  The only thing I knew about it was that it moved really slowly during January and smelled nasty.  Then when looking for a ginger snap recipe, I found to my surprise that the recipe contained this dark brown viscous goo.  It was time to broaden my horizons!

This ginger snap cookie recipe was easy enough, but there is a lot of sifting going on.  It calls for 2 sifted cups of flour, then asks you to sift the dry ingredients together, and then sift them again into a different bowl.  So why sift so much?

Sifting can accomplish a couple things.  First, it can fluff up an ingredient you are using by breaking up all the clumps.  If a recipe calls for "sifted flour", like this one does, you want to sift before you measure your flour, because it will change the amount.  Personally, I've really taken to baking by weight lately, and a cup of sifted flour weighs 1/4 ounce less than unsifted flour.  So it really can make a difference in how tough your baked good comes out.

According to an answer on StackExchange, another reason to sift is to eliminate unwanted stuff, like chunks of bran in flour or bugs (ewww!)  This has never been an issue for me, so I don't see it as an all inspiring reason to sift.  In fact, if any of the sifting occurs after measuring, I just go to town with a whisk and my life is super easy.

Anyway, back to the cookies!!  These "ginger snaps" are not at all what I would expect compared to what is sold in grocery stores.  They are bigger, softer, and have pretty looking cracks all over the top.  (Oooo!!)  Molasses is delicious and awesome.  It's sweet, but more like a rich, soulful kind of sweet.  I don't get all sugared out eating 2 cookies.  Or 5.  Or 10.  (Stop judging me.)  The cinnamon and ginger flavors are awesome with a warm cup of tea on a crisp autumn night.  So grab your whisk and some sweatpants and get ready for a comfy night!

Adjustments / Substitutions

Nothing really.  I used a stand mixer instead of doing it by hand, but that's the only real deviation.

Next Time

Whenever a recipe says it makes 5 dozen cookies, that tends to translate to 2 dozen cookies in Sara World.  I made these cookies a bit bigger than the recipe called for, which meant that I had to play with the baking time a little bit.  I think I let the first batch go slightly too long, but they still tasted great.  In the future, I would either make the cookies smaller, or get a little bit more greedy with when I take them out of the oven.

Source: Grandma's Gingersnap Cookies