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These easy Chewy Molasses Cookies are chewy sugar cookies flavored with molasses, ginger and cinnamon. The dough comes together in under 15 minutes. My grandmother’s recipe for molasses cookies with a crunchy outside and soft, chewy inside!
These unique spiced cookies are like a cross between chewy sugar cookies, old fashioned gingersnaps and soft gingerbread cookies. Chewy Molasses Cookies are a refreshingly uncomplicated Christmas cookie. Roll the dough in sugar before baking to make the outside extra crunchy and add a little sweetness. Like my chewy sugar cookies, you have that perfect crunchy exterior and chewy interior!
I love spiced molasses cookies around the Holidays! They make the perfect addition to a cookie platter. I like to vary the textures and flavors, so with these chewy cookies I would add some vanilla crescent cookies, brownie cookies, soft sugar cookies and Christmas crinkle cookies.
Table of Contents
Why this is the best molasses cookie recipe:
- Soft, chewy cookie. Melting the shortening and butter help create a thick chewy cookie. I use butter for flavor and shortening for the texture.
- Crunchy outside with a soft middle. The recipe and the extra sugar on the outside makes these perfectly crunchy around the edges.
- The dough is easy to make. Since the butter and shortening are melted, you can mix everything in one bowl! No creaming necessary.
Professional Tips for Making Chewy Molasses Cookies
- Chill the dough. Chilling the dough before baking will create thicker, chewier cookies.
- Bake just right. Bake until the edges have begun to brown, the centers are puffed and the outside has begun to crack. The center should look matte rather than shiny. They will fall and flatten as they cool.
- Scoop the dough with a cookie scoop after mixing. The dough firms up in the refrigerator, so I prefer to scoop the dough before chilling. Simply scoop and drop the balls on a parchment lined baking sheet. Wrap and refrigerate before rolling.
Ingredients
- Shortening: I use shortening in cookies for an extra chewy texture.
- Butter: I use unsalted butter for baking, because you want to control the amount of salt you are adding. Every brand is different and it makes adjusting the recipe a challenge.
- Granulated Sugar: Granulated sugar is obviously here for sweetness, but if you add too much in proportion to the butter and flour, the molasses sugar cookies will spread rather than stay tall and chewy.
- Molasses: I generally use unsulphered molasses just like in spice cookies and this caramel molasses pound cake. It has a lighter, milder flavor. This adds all the warm, winter notes without the bite of blackstrap molasses.
- Whole Egg: The eggs are here to add fat, moisture and leavening. The fat from the yolk adds richness and helps keep the cookies chewy. Beating in the eggs just enough will add a little or a lot of leavening depending on the desired texture. Eggs also emulsify the batter and keep everything texturally perfect.
- Baking Soda: Baking soda reacts with an acid to leaven the cookies. It reacts more powerfully than baking powder and will create a more dramatic rise, but will not continue to react in the heat of the oven or without the presence of an acid.
- All-purpose flour: All-purpose flour has just the right amount of gluten to make soft chewy molasses sugar cookies.
- Ground Ginger: Ground Ginger has a subtler flavor than freshly grated ginger root. It has less bite and is more warming.
- Cinnamon: I use Saigon cinnamon in these and my brown sugar cinnamon cookies but any ground cinnamon will do.
- Kosher Salt: Kosher salt is lass salty than table salt and a teaspoon weighs less than other finer ground varieties. It heightens the flavor here and will keep your molasses sugar cookies from tasting dull or flat.
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
How to Make Chewy Molasses Cookies
Use these instructions to make these easy molasses cookies. Further details and measurements can be found in the recipe card below.
Step 1: Melt shortening and butter together in a pan on low heat. While the butter and shortening melt, whisk together dry ingredients: flour, soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
Step 2: In another medium bowl add sugar, molasses and butter/shorting mixture; beat well with a hand mixer or you can make these cookies in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
Step 3: Add eggs and beat well.
Step 4: In two additions add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and stir on low speed. Chill until firm, at least 2 hours.
I prefer to scoop the cookie dough at room temperature using a 1 ½ inch cookie scoop before chilling. This ensures that it chills faster and also makes for faster and more consistent portioning.
Step 5: Preheat oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment.
Step 6: Roll into balls approximately 1 ½ inches across, roll in sugar and place 2 inches apart on your parchment paper prepared cookie sheet.
Step 7: Bake in preheated oven 9-12 minutes until the edges are brown and cracked and the centers are puffed with little cracks and are no longer shiny. Cool on a wire rack.
Chef Lindsey’s Recipe Tip
These cookies spread a lot when baked, so place them a full 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets. Rotate the trays halfway through baking.
Frequently Asked Questions
I store them in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 10 days or frozen for up to 3 months. When they are stored in an airtight container, they will lose a bit of the crispness around the edge. You could leave a corner cracked but they will dry out faster.
You can freeze the baked cookies for up to 2 months, or freeze the cookie dough balls. Then you can bake them fresh at any time.
To bake from frozen: Roll the frozen cookie dough balls in granulated sugar right before baking. Bake at 350°F for 10-14 minutes straight from frozen!
These cookies ship wonderfully. Package in a decorative tin or just place in a zip-top bag in a mailer box. They keep for 10 days and they stay chewy for almost as long. The larger the cookie, the longer they stay chewy!
You can make as large a batch of these chewy molasses sugar cookies as you would like. These were in the first Christmas Cookie Tin that my online pastry shop sold back in 2019, so I have made batches of thousands of these cookies. You are only limited by the size of your mixer.
I generally use unsulphered molasses. It has a lighter, milder flavor. This adds all the warm, winter notes without the bite of blackstrap molasses.
Since the butter and shortening were melted, these cookies do need to chill at least 2 hours before baking. Otherwise they will spread too much and they will not be chewy. Chilling the dough before baking will create thicker, chewier cookies.
If you tried this recipe and loved it please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it goes in the comments below. I love hearing from you; your comments make my day!
Grandmas Molasses Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ cup shortening
- ¾ cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- ½ cup molasses
- 2 eggs
- 4 teaspoons baking soda
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger slightly rounded
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Additional sugar for rolling
Instructions
- Melt shortening and butter together in a pan on low heat.
- While the butter and shortening melt, sift together flour, soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt; whisk to evenly distribute spices and soda. Set aside.
- In another large bowl add sugar, molasses and butter/shorting mixture; beat well with a hand mixer. Add eggs and beat well.
- In two additions add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and stir on low speed. Chill until firm, at least 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment.
- Roll into balls approximately 1 ½ inches across, roll in sugar and place 2 inches apart on your prepared cookie sheet.
- Bake in preheated oven 8-10 minutes. For mostly soft, chewy cookies bake until the edges are brown and cracked but the centers are not.* For crispy outsides and soft centers bake at least 10 minutes until the centers have started to crack.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Before You Go!
Check out our other delicious, chef-developed cookie recipes! Find more easy recipes in this collection of Easy Christmas Cookies or try some of these traditional Christmas cookies!
I love your recipe for these cookies. They are in my regular rotation. Thank you CLF. Happy Holidays to you.
Hi Lisabel! I’m so happy you love these cookies, my grandma gave me this recipe so it’s wonderful that she lives on in your regular rotation. Happy holidays to you and yours!
Making these today! Throw back to so many years ago when we made these all the time at home!
Hi Barbara! That sounds so so wonderful. Happy baking!
This is the molasses cookies recipe I have been waiting for! Perfect texture! Foolproof method!
Melt in the mouth, plenty of spice. Only change I made was instead of rolling the balls in sugar, I put them on the cookie sheet and then flattened them with the bottom of a glass coated in sugar.
Thank you for giving directions for cooking chewy and crisp cookies, that worked out perfectly
Hi Janet! I’m thrilled you’ve fallen in love with these cookies! My grandma would be so happy to hear that. Thanks for coming back to comment and review!
So happy I found your recipe. My mom passed away this fall and she made these cookies every Christmas…with the sugar coating. Family favourite …I hope to continue this Hungarian tradition. Delicious !
I am so glad, Susan!
These were delicious. I was so thrilled when these showed up in my mailbox from the swap, and now that I’ve found your recipe I can’t wait to try them out. YUM!
Thanks, Mary!!! I hope you do make them! I am so tempted to make them again!
So I’m going to go ahead and say that your Pops and I would be best friends. A cross between ginger snaps and gingerbread? And in easy-to-eat cookie form? Sounds like my heaven! Clearly I need to do some more stalking of the mail lady today. She’s a super sketchball! Hey…it worked yesterday. She totally had the gingersnaps hiding under her seat. I made her give them to me, and I’m eating them right now with my coffee. 🙂
Lol! You show that mail lady who’s boss! You might just have to spend 15 minutes and bake these instead! 😉
I can’t seem to stop looking at these beautiful cookies. They look so perfect and delicious! I love that this is your grandma’s recipe. Grandmas do know best (:
Aww thanks, Connie! Grandmas do know best!