Last night I baked a batch of Molasses Spice Cookies with Rum Glaze from Cook's Illustrated. They are lovely cracked cookies with a sugar sparkle, and have the strongest molasses flavor of any cookie I've ever baked. The rum glaze is a tawny visual counterpoint to the dark cookie and gives a preceeding scent of rum when biting into the cookie.

Measure the molasses in a liquid measuring cup. If you find that the dough sticks to your palms as you shape the balls, moisten your hands occasionally in a bowl filled with cold water and shake off the excess. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time. If baked two sheets at a time, the cookies started on the bottom rack won’t develop the attractive cracks. The cookies should look slightly raw and underbaked when removed from the oven. If you plan to glaze the cookies (see recipe below), save the parchment paper used to bake them.
INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup granulated sugar (about 2 1/2 ounces), plus 1/2 cup for dipping
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (11 1/4 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon table salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened but still cool
1/3 cup dark brown sugar (about 2 1/2 ounces)
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup molasses (about 6 ounces), light or dark

For Glaze

1 cup confectioners' sugar (about 4 1/2 ounces)
2 1/2 - 3 tablespoons dark rum


1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place 1/2 cup sugar for dipping in 8- or 9-inch cake pan.
2. Whisk flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in medium bowl until thoroughly combined; set aside.
3. In standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter with brown and granulated sugars at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium-low and add yolk and vanilla; increase speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 20 seconds. Reduce speed to medium-low and add molasses; beat until fully incorporated, about 20 seconds, scraping bottom and sides of bowl once with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to lowest setting; add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping bowl down once. Give dough final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no pockets of flour remain at bottom. Dough will be soft.
4. Using tablespoon measure, scoop heaping tablespoon of dough and roll between palms into 11/2-inch ball; drop ball into cake pan with sugar and repeat to form about 4 balls. Toss balls in sugar to coat and set on prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Repeat with remaining dough. Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are browned, still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), about 11 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake.
5. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes, then use wide metal spatula to transfer cookies to wire rack; cool cookies to room temperature. When completely cool, return cookies to cooled parchment-lined baking sheets. Whisk confectioners' sugar and 2 1/2 tablespoons dark rum in medium bowl untill smooth. If the glaze is too thick to drizzle, whisk in additional tablespoon rum. Dip spoon into glaze and then move spoon over cookies so that glaze drizzles down onto them; repeat as necessary. Transfer cookies to wire rack and allow glaze to dry, 10 to 15 minutes.

I made these molasses cookies a few weeks ago, sans the glaze, however, and really love them. They are so good by themselves, I couldn't imagine the glaze, but will probably try it when I have more time just to see how they are. I actually put the dough in the fridge overnight, which turned out to be a great way to keep the dough cool enough not to stick to my palms.

I haven't baked in a long time, so I was being very deliberate with the instructions. And I was very nervous about baking the cookies too long, as the recipe and the TV show really emphasize taking the cookies out while they still look underdone. But it worked! I also took the instructions too literally when it said to bake the cookies one sheet at time--fortunately my husband walked in to the kitchen at just the right time to remind me that our oven will accommodate two sheets pans side by side (well, I did say it's been a long time since I've baked anything and it definitely was a time saver!)

Just made a batch of Brown Sugar Cookies with the Cook's Illustrated recipe. Simple to make and a good twist on a classic.

I bought a Waring fryer on Saturday and tried this recipe for deep-fried chocolate chip cookie dough. The end product tasted great but looked horrible because I couldn't get any of them out of the frying basket without dealing with sticking. Is there a good explanation? I can speculate on possibilities but have no experience frying to know one way or the other:

1) Didn't fry long enough
2) Bad batter recipe
3) Didn't season the frying basket sufficiently
4) Wrong type of oil
5) Oil temperature too low

I've been searching for a unique peanut butter cookie for my Christmas cookies this year. I saw this post so I made these. They're really good, and they're going in my Christmas cookie packages.

Also on the topic of Christmas cookies, I bought the December issue of Gourmet, but last year's Gourmet Christmas cookie issue was more interesting to me. This issue has recipes for "trios" which are jam thumbprint cookies arranged so 3 are stuck together in a triangle shape, meringue stars, salted praline langues de chat, cinnamon palmiers, and double chocolate sandwich cookies. The cookies don't sound that exciting to me, but maybe they're better when made.

This year's Gourmet also has a number of Christmas candy recipes, and those look more interesting. The recipes are: mint lollipops, chocolate peanut toffee, passion-fruit gelees, peppermint patties, pistachio torrone, toasted-coconut marshmallow squares.

Wow, deep-fried chocolate chip cookie dough. It sounds good in a fried oreos/fried twinkies/fried candy bars-terrible-for-you kind of way. Have you tried these again? I'd guess the oil temperature was too low? Another possibility is that the cookie dough needed more time in the freezer to firm up. It seems the batter should form a crust when you drop them in. Was the batter fully cooked when you took them out?

We tried out a few new recipes this x-mas cookie season.... A lemon cookie that is divine, a 'coal' cookie that looks like a lump of coal and is a must for any choco-holic, and a Stollen-Bites 'cookie'. All were very good, but I think the lemon cookies are (right now) my favorite of the bunch.

The sugar cookie recipe in The Best Recipe is very good (with a few tweaks) but the ginger variation is splendid. I recently brought some to a dinner party and the whole batch was devoured. Highly recommended.

I made my first ever biscotti tonight. I'm not a coffee drinker so was never drawn to this type of cookie. But, I needed something that would travel well and hold up for a few days. Since the people I made these for prefer fruit and nut goods to chocolate, I figured I'd give it a shot. I made the Lenox Almond Biscotti from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours. I added dried cherries. They were simple to make but I was a little anxious about how to tell when they were done. They still seemed a little soft when I pulled them out of the second baking but I thought they'd be too dark if I left them in the oven. Besides, I figured they would set a little firmer once cooled. Just sampled one and they are great. The almond flavor shines through and the cornmeal gives it a good texture. I dunked it into a cup of tea to sea if it would hold together and it did. I think next time I might use some almond meal.

Here's the recipe that Porcupine requested:

Almendrados (misspelled in my earlier post)--Almond sugar cookies
(my interpretation of a recipe from *My Kitchen in Spain* by Janet Mendel)

3/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. finely ground almonds (almond meal)
1 tsp. grated Meyer (or regular) lemon zest
2 large eggs, separated
1/4 tsp. almond extract (optional)
1/2 c. sliced almonds

Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or Silpats.

Combine sugar, almond meal and lemon zest. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks, lower beater speed to medium and add egg yolks. Fold egg mixture into almond-sugar mixture. Add almond extract, if using. Drop by Tablespoonful onto baking sheets-- leave lots of space between cookies, because they spread out. Top each one with sliced almonds. Bake until lightly browned. 10-12 minutes.

This amount of batter supposedly makes 2 dozen cookies. I increased the recipe by half, made them bigger, and got about 20. Your guess is as good as mine about how many you'll get

NYT choc chip cookie article and recipe

Most interesting thing learned: rest dough for up to 36 hours. Anyone ever done that?

I see upthread from about a year ago some people were trying to recreate the Teaism salty oat. Anyone ever have any luck with that? Being banished to New Jersey, I would kill to be able to make some whenever I want. All we have up here are crappy black and white cookies.

Yes, but not intentionally and I wasn't thinking in terms of a comparison. Now I have a project for next week.

Recently I've been making the dough, portioning and freezing it so that I can bake, say, four cookies at a time. They are best warm from the oven. But I've noticed that with every passing day, the baked cookies are softer and gooeyer.

This is interesting stuff [for a geek like me]. Thanks for posting the link!

I often refrigerate the dough for a little while once I mix it up and then take the bowl back out to make individual batches. I prefer working with dough that's fairly cold for chocolate chip cookies. I haven't kept cc dough refrigerated that long, but I do it with the sand tarts I make at Christmas sometimes. It takes so long to make them that I stretch it over several days.

I just started doing this and it works wonders! I also only use one egg in my recipe because I like a crispier cookie.

Just ate a couple that I baked off from this recipe. Excellent cookies.