Monday, June 27, 2016

Molasses Butter Sugar Cookies

Last week, I hosted a special guest from UK.  Since everyone would come to Penang for its popular local hawker delight, originally thought of skipping this week's Molasses Butter Sugar Cookies (from Rose's The Baking Bible) as we might not have sufficient time and stomach room to consume these cookies.  So glad I made these cookies - my visitor described them as everything a good cookie should be.






INGREDIENTS
Putting together the ingredients for these cookies reminded me of my favourite Rose's Gingerbread People (from Rose's Christmas Cookies).   The only ingredient absent from the Molasses Sugar Butter Cookies was ground nutmeg.  By the name of these cookies, it was obvious that the Molasses Sugar Butter Cookies would have significant lesser amount of ground ginger.  The molasses cookies also contained a higher amount of baking soda and ground clove.

CLARIFY AND BROWN BUTTER
The other noticeable difference for the molasses cookies was the use of buerre noisette (what I wasn't familiar but have seen Rose making it on Craftsy Rose's Heavenly Cookies).  It took me a while to see the milk solids.   When I poured the butter through the strainer, the colour of the milk solid might be one tone lower than deep brown.  Next time, I should cook it for a little longer.

  

MAKING COOKIE DOUGH
There were 2 waiting time for this recipe - one was to cool down the buerre noisette to below 27C and another was to refrigerate the finished dough for an hour.  Once the buerre noisette cooled down, the wet and dry ingredients were mixed separately before mixing them together to form the dough.


  

The texture of the finished dough was soft and sticky.


SHAPING COOKIE

Once chilled, the cookie dough was easy to roll into balls.
  

BAKING

As indicated by Rose in the recipe, the cookie retained the ball shape till more than half way through the baking.  Then, it started to flatten and crack towards the end of baking.

 


So why did my visitor described this was everything a good cookie should be?
  • Appearance - nice uniform colour and size, with sugar sparkles and slight cracks
  • Texture - soft and chewy, moist even though flat
  • Crispy - crunch from the sugar coating on the outside
  • Flavour - wonderfully fragrance, similar to gingerbread cookies but not as gingery




Personally, these cookies were a little too sweet for me.  It would certainly be a good addition to the festive cookies list for occasional indulgence.

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