These ginger molasses cookies are the latest success in my ongoing efforts to master cookie baking. So far, I’ve found recipes I love for chocolate chip, shortbread and now these ginger cookies. Not an extensive or impressive list, admittedly, but, the truth is, I don’t really love cookies. I rarely crave sweets and when I do I always seems to want some sort of elaborate cake. Which, perhaps for obvious reasons, I rarely actually make. I know, cookies are far more practical for satisfying a sweet tooth than cakes. They are much faster to make, they often require only one bowl, and they allow for a mixture of textures that is uncommon in all but the most elaborate cakes. Even so, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would bake cookies, when they could be baking a cake instead. If you are going to eat sweets, why not eat something really special. I have a tendency towards this sort of all or nothing thinking.

And yet, for some reason I have always felt like baking cookies is an essential skill – one that I need to acquire. Perhaps, on some level, I am anticipating a hypothetical moment in the future when I may have children to bake for and with. Of all the expectations that are placed on women if they are to be “good mothers”, most of which I maintain a healthy skepticism of, I seem to have internalized the imperative to bake good cookies. This is important, right? Because children love cookies, don’t they? But – do children love ginger molasses cookies? Probably not. Well, let’s just say, spice cookies are a more sophisticated offering.

I have wanted to make homemade ginger cookies for quite some time because they remind me of a great uncle, my grandmother’s brother, that we used to visit as children. He had a big friendly dog, and an old fashioned whetstone wheel in his backyard (don’t ask me for what purpose) that inevitably inspired my sister and I to rounds of “There’s a hole in the bucket” - so we could properly act out the “then sharpen it” verse. And he always had a box of ginger snaps for us. Now, this recipe does not quite re-create the rock hard store bought cookies my great uncle would give us (they were more of a gingersnap than a soft molasses cookie), but they have the same gingery flavour. These cookies have soft chewy insides, and crunchy exteriors, made crunchier by sprinkling raw sugar on top.

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I intended to make Ina Garten’s “ultimate ginger cookies”, but ran out of all-purpose flour so I made some adjustments to the flour composition. I almost never tinker with the foundations of baked good recipes, because baking is too much of a science, but in this case the risk paid off. Finally, I omitted the crystallized ginger, which I couldn’t find at my grocery store, and amped up the spice level by adding a bit more of each spice than was found in the original recipe. I like a good punch of flavour, even from a cookie.