Mottley Kitchen’s Ginger Molasses Cookies

Even without a 79-foot, 12-ton tree with twinkly lights, Mottley Kitchen’s Ginger Molasses Cookies taste like the holidays.

It’s the last cookie of the season! And what a cookie season this has been. From baking friends Kathryn Wilson and Adele Bentsen’s version of Dorie Greenspan’s Do-Almost-Anything-Vanilla-Cookies spread with Biscoff Cookie Butter filling to the myriad cookie recipes the duo shared last year, including Cranberry, Oat, and White Chocolate Biscuits and Chunk Wild Cookies, to the soft and sweet Pink Grapefruit Sugar Cookies adapted from Jesse Szewczyk’s new cookbook Cookies: The New Classics, published this fall, we have quite the repertoire. But we need to add just one more.

This Ginger Molasses Cookie comes from Kat Creech at Brooklyn’s Mottley Kitchen (find them at mottleykitchen.com or on Instagram @mottleykitchen). We are grateful to Kat for sharing the recipe with us, because we became addicted to Mottley Kitchen’s Ginger Molasses Cookies in five very short days in New York, each of them punctuated by an afternoon coffee-Ginger Molasses Cookie break at Ralph’s Coffee Truck outside the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and ice-skating rink. (That’s Ralph Lauren’s perfectly dressed-up, seasonal coffee cart on 5th Avenue). Could anything be more festive?

We thought it might have been the ambiance that made Mottley Kitchen’s cookies so yummy. Then we got the recipe from Kat. The ambiance did not hurt (wishing we could bring glove-wearing weather and Bergdorf’s windows back to Houston), but truly, the cookies would have been delicious in an alley. They are perfectly soft and chewy, with just a little crunch on the edges, and full of molasses-y spice and holiday flavor. 

In the need for extra cheer this weekend? Even without a 79-foot, 12-ton tree with twinkly lights, Mottley Kitchen’s Ginger Molasses Cookies taste like the holidays.

Mottley Kitchen’s Ginger Molasses Cookies (by way of Ralph’s Coffee Truck on 5th Ave.)
Note: We adapted this recipe from Mottley Kitchen’s commercial bakery version. You will wind up with a lot of dough, and it will feel like you can’t fit all of the flour into the mixer. You can! Just go slowly and it will all come together.

3 cups sugar, plus another cup to roll cookies in
3 eggs
¾ cup molasses
6 ¾ cups flour
¾ tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt

Use a stand mixer to cream the butter and 3 cups sugar until light and fluffy, 5 minutes. While the butter and sugar are mixing, whisk the eggs and molasses together. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, baking soda, and salt. 

Scrape down the bowl of the mixer with the butter and sugar. While the mixer is running on low speed, add the eggs and molasses. Scrape the bowl again. Add the flour mixture little by little, in four additions, mixing in between additions. Cover the dough, and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Pour remaining 1 cup sugar into a shallow bowl. Roll the dough into 1 ½-inch diameter balls. Roll the balls in the sugar, then place them on the baking sheet, spacing them at about 1-inch intervals. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until the edges barely start to brown. The cookies will still be soft and will set as they sit. Repeat with remaining dough.