For my somewhat successful yard sale yesterday, I made these molasses spice cookies. They were incredible. Adapted from the Cook’s Illustrated recipe.

11 1/4 ounces flour (about 2 1/4 cups)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice*
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup Earth Balance
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar (plus more for dusting, optional)
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup light or dark molasses

Preheat oven to 375° with rack in center.

Combine flour, baking soda, spice, pepper, and salt in medium bowl. In large bowl, mix Earth Balance with brown and white sugar with a wooden spoon until nice and creamy. Add canola oil and vanilla and stir to combine, then add molasses and mix it up until it looks like this:

and try not to eat too much of it at this stage. Gradually add in the flour mixture. You should end up with a dough that’s not too crumbly, but holds together well enough to form little balls. Roll these little balls around in some granulated sugar (they’re just more magical this way) and place them on a baking sheet, which you’ll then place in the oven.

Bake for about 11 minutes – you don’t want them to be done. Remove from the oven and let them sit there for about 5 minutes and think about what they’ve done. Place them on a cooling rack and try not to eat them all at once.

*The Cook’s Illustrated version calls for adding your own cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and allspice. I didn’t have any ginger or allspice, and they’re damn expensive if you don’t have a bulk spices area in your market, so I cheat and use pre-mixed pumpkin pie spice because it’s already in roughly the right proportions. If you’re curious, those proportions are two parts cinnamon, two parts ground ginger, one part ground allspice, and one part ground cloves.

These cookies were a big hit this weekend, with some going so far as to ask whether or not I baked professionally, and one guy even said it would be criminal if I didn’t. So fool your friends and make these amazing cookies, and don’t tell them they’re vegan until after they already take a bite.

Tags: food

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Vegan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.