Soft and chewy and perfectly spiced, these soft Ginger Cookies are a favorite holiday cookie. If you are a fan of soft cookies, you’ll go crazy for these!
If you love gingerbread flavors, you also need to check out this Gingerbread Waffle Recipe with Lemon Sauce or this Caramel Gingerbread Popcorn.
My kids all think I’m crazy, because I really love a good ginger cookie.
Maybe it’s a more grown up flavor, but I can’t imagine a holiday season without some gingerbread.
These soft ginger cookies aren’t your traditional gingersnap. Nothing snappy about these babies.
Super soft with chewy edges, these are my favorite kind of ginger cookie.
Ingredients
- Butter: You’ll want your butter to be at room temperature. I like to use unsalted butter.
- Sugar: This recipe calls for three different kinds of sugar. The light brown sugar and granulated sugar go in the cookies, and then there is coarse sugar, (or turbinado sugar) that you roll the dough in.
- Egg: You just need one egg. For best results, it should be at room temperature.
- Molasses: The molasses you need for this recipe is a traditional molasses, not blackstrap molasses. It is the molasses that is most commonly found at the grocery store, most often the brands Grandma’s or Brer Rabbit.
- Flour: I use all-purpose flour.
- Spices: This recipe has a lot of spices going on! You’ll need ground ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves – and because I love an extra punch of spice – a bit of pumpkin pie spice.
- Baking Soda: This will help the cookies rise a bit.
- Salt: The salt is to balance the flavors.
How to Make Soft Ginger Cookies
Whisk together the dry ingredients – this is the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Set this aside.
In another bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar.
Add the molasses and the egg to the butter mixture and beat to combine.
Add in the dry ingredients.
Mix until the flour is incorporated. If the dough is still really sticky, add a bit more flour.
Roll the dough into about 1-inch balls, (I use a 1 1/2 tablespoon scoop), and roll them in the coarse sugar. Transfer the balls to a baking sheet.
Refrigerate the cookie dough balls for 30 minutes.
While the dough is chilling, heat the oven.
Bake the cookies just until the edges start to brown.
Tips and Tricks
If you don’t have coarse sugar, you can roll the cookies in regular granulated sugar, or you can leave the extra sugar off completely.
You can refrigerate the dough for longer than 30 minutes, but if you refrigerate it longer than an hour, I would suggest transferring the dough to the fridge before rolling, just so that the cookie dough balls don’t dry out.
You can freeze both the cookie dough and the fully baked cookies. (You can see my guide to freezing cookie dough for all the tips and tricks.)
Store the cookies at room temperature in an airtight container. They will stay soft for days!
Make Them Your Own
Make them festive – dip half of the cookie in white chocolate and add holiday sprinkles.
You can also drizzle white chocolate over the tops of the cookies.
If you don’t like very much spice, you can cut the spice amounts in half.
These ginger molasses cookies make a great addition to a cookie platter – the spiciness of the ginger and the boldness of the molasses really help them to stand out.
More Holiday Cookies
Hot Cocoa Cookies
The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe with Sugar Cookie Icing
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Mexican Wedding Cookies
Meringue Cookies
Eggnog Cookies
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Soft Ginger Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter at room temperature
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 pumpkin pie spice
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup coarse sugar
Instructions
- In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer cream the butter and brown sugar and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in the egg and molasses and continue to beat until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- In another bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Add this dry mixture to the wet ingredients and beat just until combined.
- Place the remaining 1/4 cup of coarse sugar in a small bowl.
- Roll the cookie dough into about 1 1/2 tablespoon sized balls. (I used a cookies scoop to keep them even.) Roll the balls in the sugar to coat. Place the cookies on a baking sheets that have been lined with parchment paper or a silpat liner, about 3 inches apart.
- Place the cookie sheets in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- While the cookie dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350ºF.
- Remove the cookies from the refrigerator and bake just until the cookies are golden on the edges, about 10 minutes. Let them cool on the baking sheet for a minute or two, then transfer to a cooling rack or a piece of wax paper to cool completely.
grace says
gingerbread cookies take a backseat to these, even when said gingerbread cookies are decorated adorably. 🙂
Cara says
Oh goodness! What a wonderful idea! My husband is making something similar in is restaurant but is doing an eggnog creme!
jennifurla says
These look like the flavor would be just wonderful
Julia says
It’s intimidating to get together with people who love food as much as me, because ya, the pressure is TOTALLY on!!!!! These looks awesome though!!!!
Rachel @ Not Rachael Ray says
These look SO delicious!
Katrina says
These are just lovely! They’re so pretty!
Jackie says
I love gingerbread cookies but you are right about the strong taste of candied ginger. These honestly look amazing. Great job.
Jackie
Rosa says
Lovely cookies! Mapple and ginger, what a great combination.
Cheers,
Rosa
Averie @ Love Veggies and Yoga says
yum!
gingerbread cookies sandwiched together with awesome looking maple cream cheese frosting..I’ll take a dozen 🙂