A Cornucopia of Cookies

When the holidays roll around there is only one thing on anyone's mind in the Weems household - cookie baking. We show no restraint. Each year we end up with so many cookies that we can't even find enough tupperware containers to store them in. So naturally with Christmas creeping up, I kept finding myself dreaming of holiday cookies, but fearing the thought of having hundreds of cookies floating around my house (I have no will power when it comes to dessert). But then I got to thinking about how life is short and the holidays only come around once a year (thank god), so I threw caution to the wind and made a batch of my favorite holiday cookie of all time. You can thank me later.

Ginger Molasses Cookies

3/4 cup butter (or shortening if it strikes your fancy)
1 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for rolling cookies in
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses (make sure that you do not use a molasses that is too dark - I recommend Grandma's Original Unsulphured Molasses with the yellow lid)
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinammon

Mix butter (or shortening), sugar, egg, and molasses well in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Add to wet ingredient mixture in thirds and stir after each addition to incorporate completely. After all ingredients have been incorporated, chill dough for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

After chilling dough for one hour, preheat oven to 350F. Roll tsp sized balls of dough in your hands:


and then roll each ball of dough in sugar:


Place balls of dough on a cookie sheet (only place 8 - 10 balls of dough per average sized cookie sheet - although the balls of dough start out small, they spread out to be much larger during the baking process). Bake cookies for 12 - 15 minutes. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 1 minute, then transfer to wire racks and allow to cool completely. This recipe makes approximately 30 cookies.