Soft & Chewy Molasses Gingerdoodles — These soft molasses cookies taste like a cross between chewy gingerbread cookies and crinkly snickerdoodles. An unbeatable holiday cookie recipe!
Soft Molasses Cookies Recipe
I combined three favorite cookies into one — soft molasses cookies, chewy gingerbread cookies, and crinkly snickerdoodles. That way I didn’t have to choose among favorites because I love them all. And I loved these ginger molasses cookies more than I should have. I couldn’t keep myself away from them.
I used my recipes for Soft Molasses Coconut Oil Crinkle Cookies and The Best Snickerdoodles as the jumping off point. I absolutely adore soft molasses cookies that have rich, deep, bold molasses flavor and the cookies deliver. The molasses flavor profile dominates.
There’s plenty of cinnamon, ginger, and warming spices in the dough, as well as a cinnamon-sugar coating, creating a very well-spiced cookie that packs tons of flavor in a pillowy, crinkly little package.
The cookies are super soft in the center with slight chewiness around the edges, and I always underbake slightly to ensure they stay soft for days. If you like crunchier cookies, bake them longer.
The flavor of the cookies improves and enhances in the day or two after baking. Everything just blends together beautifully, but it’s very hard for me to save any that long. They’re my new favorite molasses cookies.
What’s in Soft Molasses Cookies?
To make these soft and chewy molasses cookies, you’ll need:
- Unsalted butter
- Dark brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Egg
- Unsulphered molasses
- Vanilla extract
- Spices
- Salt
- All-purpose flour
- Cornstarch
- Baking soda
- Cream of tartar
How to Make Soft Molasses Cookies
To make these ginger molasses cookies, you first need to cream together the butter, sugars, and egg. Add in the remaining wet ingredients and the spices, then mix in the dry ingredients.
Scoop the molasses cookie dough into balls, then chill for at least 3 hours before baking. Once chilled, roll the cookie dough in a generous amount of cinnamon sugar.
Bake the soft molasses cookies until the edges have set and the tops have crackled. Don’t overbake for soft cookies (I bake mine 8 to 8 1/2 minutes and they’re extremely soft and a touch underdone but firm up in time; for crispier cookies, bake longer).
Can I Omit the Cornstarch?
If you need to omit the cornstarch due to an allergy, that’s fine. Your molasses cookies won’t be quite as soft, but they should be delicious regardless.
Can I Omit the Cream of Tartar?
Probably not if you want them to have a great pillowy texture. I have only made them as written though and cannot say for sure what will happen if you omit it.
Can I Make These Gluten-Free?
I’ve only made these soft molasses cookies as written, so I’m not sure if you can make these with a gluten-free flour blend. If you try it out, please leave me a comment below letting me know how they turn out.
Tips for Making Soft Molasses Cookies
I used dark molasses in these soft and chewy molasses cookies because I really love the intensity of it, but use your favorite. I think blackstrap molasses would be too strong, though.
Also note that if you prefer more mildly spiced cookies, you can halve the amounts of all spices used.
The dough is very soft and must be chilled before baking because chilled dough spreads less in the oven. Chilling also gives the flavors time to marry and the dough tastes better on the second or third day after it’s made. You can keep the dough in the fridge for up to 5 days before baking.
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Soft and Chewy Molasses Gingerdoodles
Ingredients
Cookies
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup dark brown sugar, packed (light brown sugar may be substituted)
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- ⅓ cup unsulphered molasses, I used robust molasses (dark; light or medium may be used; blackstrap will likely be too pungent)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
Cinnamon-Sugar Coating
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 to 3 teaspoons cinnamon
Instructions
- For the Cookies
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or large mixing bowl and electric mixer) combine the butter, sugars, egg, and beat on medium-high speed until creamed and well combined, about 4 minutes.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the molasses, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, optional salt, and beat on medium-high speed until combined and smooth, about 1 minute.
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, cream of tartar, and beat on low speed until just combined, about 45 seconds.
- Using a medium 2-inch cookie scoop, form two tablespoon mounds (I made 20). Place mounds on a large plate or tray, cover with plasticwrap, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, up to 5 days. The dough is soft, mushy, limp, and isn’t suitable for baking until it’s been chilled. Do not bake with unchilled dough because cookies will bake thinner, flatter, and be more prone to spreading.
- Preheat oven to 350F, line baking sheets with Silpats, or spray with cooking spray; set aside.
- For the Cinnamon-Sugar Coating
- Add sugar and cinnamon to a small bowl and stir to combine.
- Roll each mound of dough through the coating, liberally coating all sides. After all mounds have been coated, I like to go back and double-dip each mound to get an extra-thick coating.
- Place coated mounds on baking sheets, spaced at least 2 inches apart (I bake 8 cookies per sheet).
- Bake for about 8 to 9 minutes, or until edges have set and tops are have crackled; don’t overbake for soft cookies (I bake mine 8 to 8 1/2 minutes and they’re extremely soft and a touch underdone but firm up in time; for crispier cookies, bake longer). Cookies firm up as they cool.
- Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for about 10 minutes before serving. I let them cool on the baking sheet and don’t use a rack.
Notes
- Cookies will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 6 months. Alternatively, unbaked cookie dough can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 4 months, so consider baking only as many cookies as desired and save the remaining dough to be baked in the future when desired.
- Adapted from Soft Molasses Coconut Oil Crinkle Cookies and The Best Snickerdoodles.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Molasses Recipes:
25 Holiday Cookie Favorites — The tried-and-true favorites are all here! If you need a holiday cookie recipe, this collection has you covered!!
Soft Molasses Coconut Oil Crinkle Cookies — No butter, no problem. One of my favorite molasses cookie recipes!
Molasses Triple Chocolate Cookies – Chocolate is used three times for a fun twist on the traditional. No mixer required!
Soft and Chewy Gingerbread Molasses Chocolate Chip Bars — Rich, chocolaty & like eating a piece of molasses fudge!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies — Between the molasses, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin pie spice extract that I used, these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies beautifully showcase the flavors of fall!
Chocolate Gingerbread Toffee Cake – An EASY, no mixer cake that’s perfect for the holidays!! Chocolate and ginger are amazing together! The GINGER spiced whipped cream is the literal icing on this cake!!
Gingerbread Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting – Gingerbread bars are so much FASTER AND EASIER than making gingerbread cookies!! The sprinkles and tangy cream cheese frosting will put everyone in a festive mood!!
Originally published December 2014 and republished December 2019 with updated text.
These cookies look wonderful. Wondering if you can suggest a substitution for the cornstarch for my corn allergy family?
Thank you!
I would just omit it then if it’s due to an allergy. I’ve had people sometimes try tapioca starch in other cookie recipes that they’ve reported back about, but since I never have, and have never tried that here, I would just omit.
I was a little iffy about trying this at first, since whenever I try to combine all of my favorite things, it usually turns out terribly. I tried this recipe knowing that your recipes have never let me down in the past, and I’m glad I did. They are AMAZING! Soft, chewy, the perfect balance of molasses/ginger… I’m drooling just writing about it. Thanks for another great recipe!
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! I love these cookies too! One of my personal faves!
These cookies came out AWESOME! It was my first time doing a cookie like this, and I was wary of it being too hard and not soft. They came out perfect though, soft and chewy; the perfect texture! They taste amazing too. Adding this recipe to my folder for every year. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! And glad it’s going in your folder for next year!
Hey Averie, would it be possible to roll out for cutting into shapes after refrigeration?
I think you asked this twice, but see my other reply. Enjoy!
Would the dough be able to be rolled and cut after refrigeration, then sprinkled with the cinnamon sugar?
I’ve only made the cookies the way I wrote in the recipe so can’t speak to any changes and what would happen. Make them how I wrote. You will LOVE them!
Thanks! Sorry for posting the comment twice, my phone is acting crazy!
These are great! Made them into maybe 1-1/4″ rounds and got a really good sized batch of cookies, just over 2 dozen. Baked for 9-10 minutes and they turned out beautifully. Also rolled them in larger grain sugar as someone suggested above, which caused them to have a sort of shell that’s wonderful to crunch through to get to the chewy center. Thank you for this wonderful recipe!
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! I bet that ‘crunchy’ sugary shell-like coating is heavenly!
I am from Slovakia. I tried. They are perfect. You just eat them. You write that in the refrigerator will last five days. This is not true. We lasted 5 minutes. After removing from the oven … Thanks for the great recipe!
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! And that you ate them all in 5 minutes! :)
Tried these last night and they turned out well. They weren’t as “puffy” as some of your other cookies that I’ve tried, but they spread out appropriately–I just think they aren’t a super-high-riser cookie but they are crisp on the outside, soft inside, and they make the house smell fantastic.
You are totally correct, they are not super high risers. Some of my cookies are almost ‘too’ puffy but these aren’t one of those uber-puffy types. Glad you enjoyed them and yes they do make your house smell divine!!
I had a feeling that might be the problem. I will make the necessary adjustments and try them again. They still taste super yummy! Thanks so much!
I was wondering where you live? I live in Utah and made these but despite following the directions perfectly (which is rare for me) they still turned out too flat for my liking. Depending on where you live it could be an altitude issue. Just wondering if I should adjust for that. The dough is delish! :)
I live in San Diego, totally flat, at sea level. If you live at altitude, you’d likely need to do things you normally do in recipes to account for that. Being that I live at sea level, I don’t have altitude baking recommendations but I know there’s tons of info online.
Thanks for the note on spreading, however I was already using dark brown sugar (as the recipe calls for), KA flour AND baking the cookies straight from frozen, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I don’t imagine that swapping the parchment for silpat would make that much of a difference. Perhaps I made the cookies too big? I did use a 2″ cookie scoop, but that comes out to be about a 1/4 cup/2 ounces as opposed to 2 tablespoons.
Parchment paper is like an ice skating rink for cookies, slip and slide! Silpats are like stepping in sticky tar for cookies – tacky and they cannot slip, slide and spread. Makes a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! NIGHT AND DAY!!
I made these recently and they were delicious, but unfortunately they came out super flat – they spread way too much and I’m not sure why!
Here’s a post on what to do to prevent cookie spreading, i.e. Silpat, King Arthur Flour, etc. https://www.averiecooks.com/the-best-soft-and-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/
I can hardly wait to try these. I have made 2 or 3 of your other coconut oil cookie recipes and loved them. Thank you so much for sharing your great creations. Happy New Year!
Thanks for trying so many of my cookies and glad you’ve been pleased!
i made these last night. AMAZING flavor and I’m not a fan of gingerbread. But I followed the recipe exactly and I had all new ingredients. The cookies aren’t as puffy as pictured they actually flattened out I even chilled these overnight. I didn’t have this issue with the pumpkin white chocolate snicker doodles when I made them so I’m not sure where I went wrong lol but def a recipe to keep. Thank you!!
I have some thicker-cookies-tips in this post https://www.averiecooks.com/2014/02/the-best-soft-and-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies.html Silpat, King Arthur Flour, etc. But glad you enjoyed the cookies regardless and it’s a keeper! Pumpkin cookies doesn’t spread much because pumpkin keeps everything very puffy. After writing a pumpkin cookbook, I had to get creative how to make a flatter, pumpkin cookie that wasn’t cakey!
my last comment hasn’t published yet – but disregard – gonna just stop being lazy and run to the store…. again!!
No worries and I hope they came out great for you!
Hi there – i’ve become addicted to your site. I’m making these and don’t have cream of tartar – looks like folks say to replace the combo of cream of tartar, baking soda and corn starch with baking powder, but all the sites i’ve seen don’t convert clearly to this recipe. do you have any guidance? thank you!