FINALLY! Christmas cookie season has arrived. I love baking. It’s so relaxing for me and it’s fun to get creative with decorations. There’s something really satisfying about making a dessert look pretty enough to sit in a bakery window. That’s why I love the holiday season! If I could earn 6 figures while baking all day, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Get your holiday baking on with these ginger molasses cookies! The cookie itself is sort of a cross between a gingerbread cookie and a snickerdoodle. It’s on the softer side and loaded with all the holiday flavors and spices. After baking the cookies, I dipped them in white chocolate and added sprinkles to make them look more festive. These would be perfect for a Christmas cookie exchange.
First, let’s talk cookie making. If you don’t read anything else from me, this is very important: ALWAYS start with truly room temperature butter. Don’t try to microwave it or shortcut it. Baking is a science and cookies require room temp butter to turn out the correct consistency in your cookies. The first step to these cookies is creaming together the softened butter and brown sugar until it’s fluffy like this:
Then you can incorporate the rest of the ingredients. This dough is particularly thick and kind of hard to stir. So if yours is thick, you haven’t done anything wrong! It’s supposed to be like that.
Now you refrigerate the dough to make it a bit harder, then you roll it into balls and roll the ball in granulated sugar. The sugar exterior makes the little cracks on the top of the cookie. You can use a medium cookie scoop to make sure each cookie is the same size, but I just eyeballed it.
Once they’re done baking, you’ll need to cool them completely before trying to dip them in white chocolate.
A note about white chocolate: You’ll need a certain thin consistency to dip these in. You can use white chocolate and thin it out with a few tablespoons of shortening. Or you can use almond bark or candy melts which would be easier because they melt thinner than chocolate. I would try the candy melts first if you’re worried about it. All 3 will give you basically the same exact flavor.
Once you dip them in white chocolate, just add the sprinkles on top. You can use different Christmas themed sprinkles but I thought the holly leaves and berries were really cute. I found them in this set from Walmart:
Let them cool on parchment paper and there you have it! Super cute Christmas cookies that are soft and delicious.
Ginger Molasses Cookies
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup butter (softened)
- 1 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar (for rolling the cookies)
Decoration:
- 12 oz white chocolate melting wafers/candy melts
- Christmas sprinkles of your choice
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Combine the butter and sugar in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Cream for one minute, or until fluffy. Add in the egg and beat until smooth. Next add in the molasses and mix until combined.
- Place the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt into a sifter (if you don’t have a sifter, whisk in a bowl), and then add to the butter mixture. Mix until just combined, don't over mix. Refrigerate the dough for 15 minutes.
- Using a medium cookie scoop (or about 1.5 Tablespoons), roll the cookie dough into a ball. Place the granulated sugar into a shallow bowl and then roll the dough into the sugar. Place on the baking sheet, about 2 inches apart.
- Bake 8-10 minutes and let cool on the pan 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Once cooled completely, heat the white chocolate candy melts according to package directions and dip cooled cookies halfway in it. Decorate with sprinkles as you wish.
