Molasses Ginger Cookies

Everybody who knows me also knows that I very rarely have anything to do with the kitchen. In fact, apart from lunch and breakfast, I try to avoid cooking altogether.

But Wednesday night, I went on the computer and found a completely vegan recipe for molasses ginger cookies and set out to make them for my brother David's birthday, which was actually in late December, but we've always celebrated it around St Patrick's Day.

These cookies have no artificial things in them like egg substitutes or soy milk, although it does call for vegan buttery spread. I used sunflower oil.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp ginger powder
1 Tbsp fresh grated ginger
1/4 cup water 
1/4 - 1/3 cup molasses
1/3 cup melted vegan buttery spread (or sunflower or canola oil) 
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder


As it always is in recipes, the first thing you have to do is preheat the oven to 375 degrees. I didn't actually do this, because my mom was making bread and had the oven on at 350 degrees already. But unless your mom is making bread and has the oven on at 350 degrees already, you should preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 


Now you're supposed to soften your vegan buttery spread. I didn't do this, either, because as I said, I used sunflower oil, which had no need of being melted. 


Then, you get a big mixing bowl. Not too big, but big enough to hold all the dry ingredients (plus the wet ingredients, because you eventually add them all together. spoilers!) : flour, sugar, ginger powder, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder/soda. Put all of the dry ingredients (if you're too stupid to go back and read the list, you're too stupid to make these cookies) in the big, but not too big, mixing bowl. Stir them up until you can't see any individual ingredients; just a load of powdery stuff. 


In another bowl that's lots smaller, mix together the rest of the ingredients. These are the wet ingredients. Grating a tablespoon of ginger is not difficult. It just takes a fair amount of ginger. A tablespoon, roughly. The molasses and oil will not mix, nor will the water and oil mix. DO NOT DESPAIR! Just pour the whole lot of it into the bowl that's big enough to hold the wet and the dry ingredients. 


Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. You may have to add a couple of teaspoons of water in order for the dough to mix up well enough.


It will look like chocolate once it's all stirred up. It does not, as you will find out when you inevitably taste the stuff that looks like chocolate, taste like chocolate. It tastes as the ingredients would suggest. There is no chocolate in the list of ingredients. Don't be fooled by the beautiful chocolate-brown dough. 


The recipe says that you can freeze the dough for half an hour. i didn't do that, because it also said you didn't have to freeze the dough for half an hour. I just rolled it into twenty-four beautiful little balls, each of which was rolled in a bowl of sugar and placed on a single greased cookie sheet. The recipe says it makes twenty. Maybe i made mine too small. But that doesn't matter. However big or small you make them, you will get the equivalent of 20 cookies. 


Without turning the oven down, leave the cookies in the oven for eight to ten minutes. Or nine minutes. Whichever of the two. I had to bake them for an extra two or three minutes before they were finished. You may have to do the same. 


I slid my perfect cookies onto one of those things that's all those lines of metal. Cooling racks, I think. I waited fifteen minutes, give or take, before eating four. 


Well, I didn't eat four. Four people ate one each. They were delicious. 


I gave the rest to David the next morning. He thought they were delicious, too. 


I'm such a good cook. 


Recipe courtesy of Healthy. Happy. Life.