Soft Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3 C all-purpose flour
• 1 TB cinnamon
• 1 TB ground ginger
• 1 t baking soda
• 1/2 t cloves
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened and cubed
• 1 egg
• 3/4 C molasses (rich taste or robust, not blackstrap)
• 2 TB milk
• 1/2 C granulated sugar
• 1/2 C powdered sugar

Directions:

• In a large bowl, whisk flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, cloves, and salt to combine. In a separate large bowl using electric hand mixer or in bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat butter and brown sugar on high speed for 2 minutes until smooth and light. On low speed, stir in egg, then molasses, then milk. Mixture will be slightly lumpy, this is OK.
• Slow stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined. Cover bowl and refrigerate dough one hour or up to overnight.
• Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Shape dough into 1-inch balls, roll each ball in granulated sugar, then in powdered sugar, until well-coated. Transfer to prepared baking sheet, spacing dough at least 2 inches apart.
• Bake 9-11 minutes until edges of cookie are just set. Cool cookies 5 minutes on baking sheets, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

Yield: approximately 30-40 cookies

A few tips to take into consideration:

1. Be sure to refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. When the dough is freshly mixed, it’s very soft, and if you get too hasty and bake it right away, it’s more likely to spread thin in the oven. The refrigeration helps not only with shaping but with dough stability in the oven, so the cookies bake with more height in the centers, ensuring that softness.

2. Don’t overbake the cookies! Take them out of the oven as soon as the edges are set. The centers might be a little underbaked at first, but they’ll continue to bake a bit as the cookies cool on the cookie sheet and the end result will be ridiculously soft, as previously explained.

3. Be liberal with the powdered sugar coating. The more powdered sugar on the cookie dough ball before baking, the more of it will be retained after baking. Unlike traditional crinkle cookies, some of the powdered sugar on these cookies will dissolve during baking, but there’s still enough of it that stays bright white to give them that classic crinkle cookie vibe.

4. Look for “robust” or “rich taste” molasses and use that in this recipe. If you can’t find it, light molasses (sometimes just labeled “molasses”) works, too. I don’t recommend blackstrap molasses for this recipe, as it’s less sweet.

Recipe credit: Girl versus Dough