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Rustic Molasses Cookies

These Rustic Molasses Cookies are a delicious Christmas cookie idea, or simply a great dessert year-round. This mouth-watering sweet treat is brimming with the flavors of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and molasses. They come out so soft, that everyone will look for your cookies at every get together you attend.

To make this rustic molasses cookies you’ll need: butter, white sugar, an egg, molasses, flour, baking soda, salt, ground cloves, cinnamon, and ground ginger.

Rustic Molasses Cookies on a plate with a glass of milk in the background.

Some things remind me more of home than others and molasses cookies are one of those things. They’re one of my mom’s favorite cookies, and who can blame her with that perfect blend of spices and molasses?

Finding a soft rustic molasses cookies should definitely be considered one of the finer things in life because they’re a gem.  This recipe creates one of the softest molasses cookies you’ll ever find. No wonder my mom loves them so much!

Smelling a good molasses cookie bake is pretty irresistible in my book. Plus, I truly love how cookie recipes become a learning lesson in my house.  My son’s penmanship is a disaster, but I think he will understand fractions when the time comes without a problem.  The boys and I spend more time than I really want to admit, baking cookies and staring through the glass on the oven watching them take shape. With all of the measuring they do for those recipes, fractions will be a piece of cake.

How Do You Make Rustic Molasses Cookies?

These molasses cookies are super easy – the hardest part is just waiting for the dough to chill once it’s been mixed.

To begin, add the butter, 1 cup of sugar, and the egg to a large bowl and mix well. Add the rest of the ingredients except the remaining sugar and mix well again. Cover the bowl and chill for two hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and remove dough from fridge. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place two inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until tops are cracked, then remove and let cool on wire racks.

Tips for Making Rustic Molasses Cookies

  • If you don’t have a wire rack, try to just get the cookies off of the baking sheet and sitting where they can breathe to cool. This finishes the baking process in the most successful manner possible for this type of cookie.
  • Chilling the dough is vital for it to bake properly. If the dough doesn’t have the right consistency, not only will it be hard to work with when forming the balls for baking, but it can cause the cookies to not turn out quite right. Chilling the ingredients alters their properties a bit, causing them to react to the baking process differently than if they weren’t chilled.
Rustic Molasses Cookies

Common Questions About Rustic Molasses Cookies

What Does Molasses Do for Cookies?

Did you know that brown sugar is made using molasses? That’s what makes it different than normal white sugar. However, adding molasses straight to a cookie recipe rather than using just brown sugar makes the molasses flavor much stronger and more prominent. Molasses won’t add a ton of extra sweetness like adding extra brown sugar would. So, you get all the molasses flavor without a high level of sweetness in addition. Plus, molasses attracts moisture so it causes a cookie to be extra soft and stay that way for longer than the average cookie.

Where Did Molasses Cookies Originate?

These soft molasses cookies originated in Marblehead, Massachusetts and were first called “Joe Froggers.” The man who created them was named Joe and he lived by a frog pond. The cookies reminded people of the frogs around the area, which is how the “froggers” part got thrown in the title. Fisherman used to love taking these cookies out on the boat because they stayed soft a lot longer than normal cookies. Joe wouldn’t give out the recipe and made them for everyone in the town. It didn’t take long though before the recipe finally got out and got spread around town and then around the world as a classic, favorite cookie.

Other Dessert Recipes You Might Like

Rustic Molasses Cookies on a plate with a glass of milk in the background.
Yield: 24

Rustic Molassess Cookies

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes

This mouth-watering sweet treat is brimming with the flavors of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and molasses. They come out so soft, that everyone will look for your cookies at every get together you attend.

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup butter, melted
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ cup molasses
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ cup white sugar

Instructions

  1. In a medium bowl, mix together the melted butter, 1 cup sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in the molasses. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and ginger; blend into the molasses mixture. Cover and chill dough for 1 hour.
  2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Roll dough into walnut sized balls, and roll them in the remaining ½ cup white sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.
  3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until tops are cracked. Cool on wire racks.

This Old Fashioned Molasses Cookie post was originally published in April of 2014. Revised December 2019.

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5 COMMENTS

  • Maryann D.

    I normally like chocolate chip cookies, but I would love to try these Molasses cookies. I would enjoy them I am sure with my cup of tea and my daughter does have some Molasses that she bought.

  • ellen beck

    My Mom and Grandmother also used to make molasses cookies. Way way back they were a very popular cookie and I know my Grandmother even made them with sorgum!

  • Mary Dailey

    My husband has been wanting me to make him some molasses cookies. I’m going to try this recipe!

  • Della Barker

    These sound wonderful. They remind me of a gingersnap and I can’t wait to try them!

  • Linda Bradshaw

    I have not tried any of these types of cookies yet. I would love to try them and see how they taste. I bet they are good.