Homemade soft molasses cookies with crackly tops are super chewy and perfectly spiced. They stay seriously soft for days—if they last that long—and are always a holiday favorite.
Molasses cookies have always been my top choice because they bring me right back to my childhood. I grew up helping my mom bake them. After rolling the dough in the sugar and watching them bake through the little oven window, my sweet reward was biting into a warm cookie fresh from the oven. In addition to the nostalgia, the soft texture paired with cozy molasses puts them above any other cookie.
Sorry, chocolate chip cookies, you don’t even compare.
Molasses Cookie Comparison
Since they’re a favorite, I have plenty of gingersnap/molasses cookie recipes on my website and in my cookbooks. Most stem from the same-ish recipe with the exception of the crisp variety. Let’s review what makes each one individually and undeniably delicious:
- Soft White Chocolate Chip Molasses Cookies: Studded with white chocolate chips, these cookies are lusciously soft and mega chewy. You’ll love the combination of cozy spices and white chocolate.
- Soft Gingersnap Molasses Cookies: These extra soft cookies are fat and fluffy!
- Ginger Pistachio Cookies: I add salty pistachios to my mom’s classic recipe. These ginger molasses cookies are soft, salty, sweet, and spiced. Find this recipe in Sally’s Cookie Addiction cookbook.
- Crisp Molasses Cookies: Another favorite! These are extra crisp. If you’re looking for a crunchy molasses cookie, this one’s for you—they actually snap when you break them!
- Chocolate Ginger Cookies: These are an elevated twist to our classic molasses cookies. You’ll appreciate the added cocoa flavor and how they are beautifully finished with dark chocolate and crystallized ginger.
If I had to choose, I would always reach for my mom’s recipe that lives in Sally’s Baking Addiction cookbook. Nothing compares to mom’s.
What Makes These Molasses Cookies Different?
Another molasses cookie recipe? Yes! These cookies are different from my other varieties and here’s why: they’re soft, crackly, and chewier than all the rest. I used my traditional soft gingersnap molasses cookies recipe as a starting point (the cute puffy ones!). My goal was to produce a flatter, chewier cookie with the same amount of softness. To accomplish this, I used the same ingredients but slightly altered the ratios:
- Flour: I reduced the flour considerably to yield a flatter cookie.
- Baking Soda: To avoid a super flat and overly greasy cookie, I increased the baking soda. Need that lift!
- Spices: Same amount. This careful blend of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves is exactly what every molasses cookie needs!
- Butter, Brown Sugar, Egg, + Vanilla: Same amounts. Brown sugar is what helps produce the softest molasses cookie ever. (In fact, it’s the first thing I changed when making my crisp molasses cookies.)
- Molasses: Make sure you’re using unsulphured or dark molasses, but do not use blackstrap because it is too intense for these cookies.
Mission accomplished. These cookies are mega chewy, mega soft, and mega crackly!
Which Molasses Do I Use?
There are varying intensities of molasses on store shelves from lighter molasses to blackstrap molasses. Go for an unsulphured or dark molasses, also sold as “robust” molasses. Blackstrap molasses can be quite intense—I don’t bake with it too often.
I’m not working with any of these companies, but I prefer Grandma’s, Brer Rabbit, or Wholesome brands. Wholesome’s organic molasses is super dark, so it will make your cookies a little darker. Look how dark it makes my spiced gingerbread loaf. As opposed to the same recipe as a cake (moist gingerbread snack cake) made with Grandma’s brand. What a difference in color!
How to Make Soft Molasses Cookies
- Whisk the dry ingredients together.
- Combine the wet ingredients together.
- Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.
- Chill cookie dough. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Roll cookie dough into balls. Use about 1 Tablespoon of dough per cookie.
- Generously roll each cookie dough ball in granulated sugar. For sparkle, of course!
- Bake. The cookies will puff up as they bake then gently sink back down. This is what creates those familiar crinkles and crackles we love. If your cookies aren’t cracking, gently bang the cookie sheet on the counter 2–3x which will help those warm cookies spread and crack on top. See recipe direction #5.
This is a wonderful make-ahead recipe because the cookies stay seriously soft for days (if they last that long!).
More Christmas Cookie Recipes
- Christmas Cookie Sparkles
- Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
- Iced Oatmeal Cookies
- Gingerbread Cookies
- Brown Butter Sugar Cookies
- Peppermint Mocha Cookies
- Neapolitan Cookies
- Snowball Cookies
- Spiced Eggnog Oatmeal Cream Pies
And here are 75+ Christmas cookies with all my best success guides & tips.
Print
Seriously Soft Molasses Cookies
- Prep Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: 30-32 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These seriously soft molasses cookies are the most tender and chewy gingersnap cookies around!
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup (80ml) unsulphured or dark molasses (do not use blackstrap; I prefer Grandma’s brand)
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Rolling
- 1/3 cup (67g) granulated or coarse sugar, for rolling
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt together until combined. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a hand-held or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and both sugars together on high speed until creamy and combined, about 2 minutes. Add the molasses and beat until combined. Then add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
- On low speed, slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. The cookie dough will be slightly sticky. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour and up to 2–3 days.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. (Always recommended for cookies.) Set aside.
- Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator. If the cookie dough chilled longer than 2 hours, let it sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. The cookies may not spread in the oven if the dough is that cold. Roll cookie dough, 1 Tablespoon each, into balls. Roll each in granulated sugar and arrange 3 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 11–12 minutes or until edges appear set. If the tops aren’t appearing cracked as pictured, remove the baking sheet from the oven and gently bang it on the counter 2–3x. This will help those warm cookies spread out and crack on top. Return to the oven for 1 additional minute.
- Remove from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies will stay fresh covered at room temperature for 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 2–3 days. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and bring to room temperature, if desired, before serving. Unbaked cookie dough balls (before rolling in sugar) will freeze well for up to 3 months. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, preheat the oven, then roll in granulated sugar. Bake as directed. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools: Stand Mixer | Molasses | Silpat Baking Mat | Cookie Sheet | Cooling Rack
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Keywords: soft molasses cookies, molasses cookies
I added an additional egg and 1/2 cup flour, no refrigeration, melt in your mouth cake like cookie, delicious!
Delicious! I’ve made this twice in the past week, they’re even better with a bit of cardamom, and I love rolling them in turbinado sugar You’re going to need to hide these from your family!
★★★★★
Hi Sally – We’re anxious to try these incredible looking molasses cookies. One question please: we are not fans of cloves and ginger. What ingredients would you substitute or would you just leave them out? Thanks very much.
Hi Rick, you could leave them out or replace them with more cinnamon and nutmeg, but the flavor won’t be quite as complex. Hope you enjoy the cookies!
What do you do if you put twice as much brown sugar in the molasses cookies that are on your site. I had 4 X the recipe. Instead of 2 cups brown sugar I added 4 cups of brown sugar? Please help. I haven’t baked the,
M yet.
Hi Jackie, unfortunately there isn’t much to do at this point. You can certainly try baking them off, but the cookies will be very sweet and likely spread quite a bit with that amount of sugar.
Sorry my kid got a hold of the laptop Yes i love the recipe
★★★★★
These are my mom’s favorite!
★★★★★
These turned out sooo good. I didn’t have ground cloves so I used pumpkin pie spice as it had everything I needed and I added extra cinnamon. Great flavor didn’t crinkle crack really tho but my family doesnt care. Definitely my new go to cookie recipe
Made these tonight. Upped the ginger to 1 heaping T and added a pinch of white pepper (less flavor conflicting notes than black pepper) and 1/3 cup candied ginger bits because we like GINGER cookies, not ginger cookies. Wow! What I did not expect was that the butter and caramel flavors would come through as strongly as these did. These are a nice combination of ginger cookies and chocolate chip cookie base. These are a hit and definitely a make again recipe!
I only refrigerated the dough for about an hour. That probably allowed the vanilla and caramel notes to come through. I usually refrigerate my family gingerbread dough recipe overnight for in your face spices.
★★★★★
This recipe turned out wonderful. The cookies are full of flavor and delicious. I made them for a church coffee hour. They were very popular. Definitely will make them again!
★★★★★
Can you leave out the nutmeg and cloves? I am not fond of either of those spices.
Hi Becky, yes. You may wish to increase the ginger and cinnamon a bit to make up for the loss of flavor by omitting the nutmeg and cloves. Hope you enjoy the cookies!
These are delicious! Make them often. Thx for sharing
Every bit as soft and delicious as claimed. Not sure about other comments about sweetness, but I didn’t have my glasses on when choosing a measuring cup and used 1/3 cup white sugar rather than 1/4. Turned out fine. Will make again – and again!
★★★★★
This is a great recipe. They came out just right! I made them once with no nutmeg because I didn’t have any and they were fine but when I used it like the recipe says to the were even better.
★★★★★
Please be mindful of the proper procedure for measuring out the flour when making these cookies. I read the comments and can’t help but think that this is the exact type of results you get when making this mistake. This recipe is amazing!
I’m so disappointed. My cookies came out terrible they weren’t as sweet as I would like i. As I would like. Then I read the comments and notice that someone said there was or you said there was a typo in the recipe. I should have used one cup of sugar instead of the one third cup of sugar. Maybe I will try these cookies again but not now.
★
I made these cookies with the recipe. The cookies came out dry. Not chewy at all. Won’t make again. All right author
★
I just made these, and they came out looking just like the photo. Crisp on the outside with a soft chewiness on the inside. Everyone loved them. One bad thing, you will eat to many they are that good.
★★★★★
OMGosh!!!! These are so good!! And super soft!! My family just loves them. Thank you!!
Love a good molasses cookie. Have you ever tried a bit of black pepper in this recipe? I read somewhere that it gives just a little ’kick’
★★★★★
YES! In fact, I just put the final touches on a slightly adapted version of this recipe for my next cookbook, and it includes a pinch of fine black pepper. Highly recommend.
Amazing! They didn’t spread that much in the oven even after tapping the tray so I pressed them down with the back of a glass cup and so good! Perfectly chewy and not too sweet
★★★★★
I was a little disappointed. They puffed up nicely but never got flat and only some of them crinkled a tiny bit. They were very cakey. That said, they tasted great and people liked them. It just wasn’t quite what I was lookibg for and they looked NOTHING like the picture. I followed the recipe exactly.
★★
Delicious, Soft & Chewy. I added a little extra spices. Ginger 2 1/2 tsp. , Allspice 1 tsp. (instead of clove), 1 tsp. Nutmeg. The extra spices really added a lot of flavor 😉
★★★★★
This recipe tastes good but lacks ginger taste even though I used ginger powder and real ginger chopped. I did not overbake these and they are hard and crispy which I was not looking for. I believe that no matter how little one bakes these, they will be hard.
★★
Can I use real ginger and how would it be added?
Hi Mima, we haven’t tested it but you should be able to use fresh grated ginger. Just remember that fresh ginger isn’t as strong as ground dried ginger so you will need to use more, and you should grate it as finely as possible. You could add it in at the end of step 2 with the egg and vanilla.
This is the best cookie ever
★★★★★
If I use pumpkin pie spice instead of the individual spices how much should I use?
Hi Cheryl, pumpkin pie spice typically includes a bit of allspice, which we do not use in this recipe. If desired, you could swap the total amount of spices with the same amount of pumpkin pie spice. The cookies will, of course, have more of a pumpkin spice flavor than intended. Let us know if you do give it a try.
Hi Sally & team! I was curious about this reference above: “If I had to choose, I would always reach for my mom’s recipe that lives in Sally’s Baking Addiction cookbook. Nothing compares to mom’s.” So I got the cookbook from our library but now I’m confused. I always weigh my ingredients in all of your recipes and this one calls for “1 1/3 cups (165g) granulated sugar”. But 1 cup sugar = 200g, correct? Is this supposed to be 1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup sugar for 165g? Or is it 265g of sugar? I made the cookies with 265g of sugar (200g in the actual cookies and rolled in the remainder) but they turned out extremely sweet and flat. So maybe it really is 165g which would be 1/2 cup inside the cookies. Would you please clarify? Thanks so much! You guys are always so helpful!
★★★★★
Hi Marilyn, that sounds like a typo. It is 1 cup of sugar (200g) in the dough and 1/3 cup (about 67g) for rolling in that recipe. I have multiple copies of that book (hard cover and paperback) and haven’t seen that, but it’s obviously showing up in prints. Let me get in touch with my publisher of that book. Thank you for letting me know!
The receipe above (that I see and used) says 1/2 packed brown sugar and 1/4 white sugar only totaling 3/4 of a cup. My cookies came out perfect using that amount. ??
Hi Jean, the comment you’re replying to is discussing a recipe in one of Sally’s cookbooks. This recipe on the website is correct. Hope that helps!
They taste great but came out super flat. Not sure if high attitude has anything to do with it.
★★★
Hi Sandra, I wish we could help, but have no experience baking at high altitude. Some readers have found this chart helpful: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/high-altitude-baking.html