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Few foods are as tightly bound to the holidays as cookies. They’re gifted and decorated, shipped and left out for Santa—they’re the first consideration when you ponder holiday baking (assuming your fruitcakes have been safely tucked away in October).

Hosting

If you’re planning a swap, consider accommodating a wide range of cookie needs by letting everyone know they can simply bake as many as they’d like to take. Pick up some extra containers and zip-lock bags at the dollar store, and consider asking everyone to print out copies of the recipe (or even just one, to snap on your phone).

Attending

If you’re an attendee, consider bringing logs of refrigerator cookie dough (they look great in holiday wrap) for everyone to take home to slice and bake as needed. Besides being less work, dough is more compact, keeps longer, and who doesn’t love having the means for a batch of freshly baked cookies at the ready? Bars can also be less fussy, and easy to wrap, freeze and transport in a stack. Resist the urge to attempt to make your entire quota at once by tripling or quadrupling a recipe—with baked goods, you can usually get away with doubling it, but more than that can send things out of whack.

Taking them Home

Once you’re at the point of packaging cookies up to take home, try to keep soft and crisp ones separate—packed together, the crisp cookies will soften, the moist ones dry out, and the flavours will mingle. Separate them if you can, and tuck any you won’t eat in a few days (or didn’t eat on the ride home) into the freezer. (If you have sneaky housemates, outsmart them by saving empty frozen vegetable bags to tuck cookies into for safe storage.)

Holiday Cookies – Chewy Ginger Molasses Crinkles

Along with these Chewy Ginger Molasses Crinkles, check out some of Julie Van Rosendaal’s other cookie recipes: Classic Shortbread Cookies and Chocolate Tahini Rugelach.

ginger molasses cookies
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Chewy Ginger Molasses Crinkles

Cookie dough you roll into balls that spread and crack in the oven are perhaps the easiest to make; you could turn these into chocolate gingerbread cookies by swapping 1/2 cup cocoa for 1/2 cup of the flour. As with drop cookies, the key is to not overbake them—they should be set around the edges, but still soft in the middle. Remember that they’ll firm up as they cool.
Course cookies
Servings 2 dozen

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter Room Temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup dark molasses 
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 cups All-Purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda 
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ginger
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and molasses.
  • Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Stir by hand or beat on low speed just until well blended and smooth.
  • Roll into 1-inch balls, and roll each in a shallow dish of sugar to coat. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
  • Place the balls a couple inches apart on a parchment-lined sheet and bake for 12 minutes, or until spread, cracked on top and slightly darker around the edge.
  • Remove from pan to a wire rack to cool. Makes 2-3 dozen cookies.