The Twelve Cookies of Christmas: Orange Spice Molasses Cookies

 

The Twelve Cookies of Christmas: Orange Spice Molasses Cookies

These cookies are amazing! They might be my new favorite molasses cookies. There are a couple steps to prep the ingredients, but if you have a coffee grinder you use for spices or grinding non-coffee items, this will help with both of the steps. Once that is over, the recipe is super easy. Since there is a source, I'm going to post the link to it, rather than write it out.

Orange Spice Molasses Cookies

Here we have the prepped specialty items for this recipe. Above on the left is the sugar with the orange zest ground into it. It's such a neat color! And on the right is the ground oats. On the plate is the rest of the zest for the dough. I didn't realize going into it that I needed several Tablespoons of zest and only had one orange to zest. I split it between the two parts, but I would definitely do the zest of two oranges in the future.

Creaming the butter and sugars without a mixer really is easy and good exercise. I am once again reminded that I wouldn't have been able to do this prior to my QVar inhaler getting me past my covid problems.

Here it is mixed with the zest.

And with all the wet ingredients mixed in.

Here is post oatmeal. For some reason I don't have any shots of it after adding the flour.

But here is the first iteration of the cookies. I made 40 portions and then worked on evening them out. I was not sure about not chilling them first, but I followed the recipe and it did just fine!

Rolling them in the orange sugar. The orange sugar makes more than you'll need, so you can either keep it for a second batch or possibly even cut the sugar and zest in half and not waste the ingredients.

Post sugaring.

A full tray ready for the oven! You can see that the sugar is a bit powdery, because it's been ground up with the zest. I like it this way so you don't get whole grains of sugar when you bite into them.

Here is the final product. It gets the nice cracks that a molasses cookie should have. Mine ended up needing 14 minutes, not 10. Sacrifice one to be the tester. Cut it in half and keep an eye on it after the 10 minute mark to see how they're baking on the inside. 

The texture is amazing! I will be freezing them to take to Thanksgiving Part Two with my family, and sharing some with my parents and coworkers this week!

This recipe was well worth the extra prep steps. Orange put it right into wintertime, and my sister pointed out that it tastes like a mini gingerbread cookie. They have all the typical gingerbread spices, so that makes sense.

These just feel festive and extra special, perfect for this time of year! Santa will enjoy these, for sure!

Happy Baking!