Fall Is In The Air

With the cooler weather upon us I have been in the mood for some Fall baking. I made molasses cookies last week and then some pumpkin bread/muffins this week. Joey loves my pumpkins muffins and there is never any left over. We love them for breakfast or snacks. There's just something about cinnamon and cloves wafting through your kitchen to get you in the mood. I also brought out my Fall decorations yesterday and decided to put them up. I don't normally do that until October 1st, but I was having a girl's night at my house last night and wanted to be festive:). Besides, it's almost October 1st.

Now, back to the food part. The secret to good molasses cookies is in the baking soda versus the baking powder. These cookies always get rave reviews and when you dig deeper into why other people's aren't as good, it's the powder. My mom uses sorghum in her cookies, but I prefer to use black strap molasses because of the health benefit it adds.

Molasses Cookies

3/4 c. soft butter
1 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 c. molasses
2 1/4 c. sifted flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger

Mix butter, sugar, egg, and molasses. Sift all dry ingredients together. Add to the wet mixture and chill until firm. Roll into balls and then roll into sugar. Bake 375 for 10 minutes.
*If you choose not to chill your dough for time reasons, your cookies will be a little flatter, but I tend to like them like that anyway.
*To make your own homemade brown sugar, simply blend one cup of sugar and 1 tbsp. of molasses. Add your sugar first though. It's healthier and cost effective. Have you ever looked at the ingredients of a bag of brown sugar from the store? All it is is sugar and molasses. If you're going to use regular white sugar, then you might as well buy it from the store, but I make my own for health reasons because organic brown sugar is expensive. I buy the organic sugar from COSTCO and the molasses from our local health food store. So good!

Happy Baking!!