Oatmeal Raisin Molasses Cookies

These oatmeal raisin molasses cookies are sweet, soft and chewy! What is not to love about a good, old fashioned oatmeal raisin cookie. This recipe has an extra added ingredient, molasses. Molasses adds a wonderful complementary flavor to your original oatmeal raisin cookies as well as keeps them nice and soft. With the added molasses I was able to reduce the amount of butter, keeping them soft and chewy while added nutrition with the molasses and lowering the fat content. I would not consider them healthy, but improved.

• Ingredients for Oatmeal Raisin Molasses Cookies
• How To Make Oatmeal Raisin Molasses Cookies
• How To Freeze Cooking Dough

The molasses add a bold flavor but is not overpowering. The molasses also adds the perfect amount of moisture that keeps the cookie soft while lowing the butter amount a little. With a little less butter the cookies will not burn as easily and makes the cookie slightly healthier. There is still plenty of butter to create a chew texture with the sugar and oats, so don’t worry, its not that healthy.

The molasses also adds an abundance of vitamins and minerals that your cookie would otherwise be without, so another good reason to call these cookies “healthier”. If you want to learn more about the “Benefits of Blackstrap Molasses” click here.

Ingredients of Oatmeal Raisin Molasses Cookies

Butter

1 cup of butter at room temperature for best results. Butter is the foundation of any cookie. It is what makes our cookies both soft and chewy. It holds the dough together and also allows the cookie to spread and take its shape as it cooks. The amount of butter and even the temperature of the butter can make your cookie chewier, crispy or even cake like. We are looking for soft and chewy.

Brown Sugar

This recipe just uses brown sugar. If you are all out of brown sugar that’s okay, if you have molasses you can make your own brown sugar, click to find out how. Brown sugar has molasses in it and has more moisture making the cookies chewy while keeping them soft and not crunchy.

Eggs

Eggs help our cookie from crumbling. They help holds everything together and is a part of the rising action and helps determine the crumbliness or chewiness of your cookie. This recipe calls for two eggs. But after reading “Cookie Science: How Do Eggs Affect My Cookies?” I might try double yoke and one white instead of 2 whole eggs. For now I’m keeping it simple also cause it works. 2 eggs.

Molasses

Molasses is a rich in nutrient, color, and flavor, thick syrup that we get from sugar cane. I use blackstrap molasses for its nutrient benefits in smoothie, pasta sauces, chili, breakfast muffins, and more. Although we have molasses in our brown sugar I added more to enrich the flavor and texture of this cookie while adding extra nutrients and taking out a little saturated fats by using less butter than normal.

Vanilla

Sometimes I do without the vanilla because the molasses adds enough flavor, but a little vanilla or almond extract always enhances any baked goods.

Flour

All purpose flour is best for this recipe. Although sometimes I use a 50/50 ratio of all purpose and whole wheat as I have that premixed in a jar for my breads and other recipes. Its easy to use and my family doesn’t seem to mind 1/2 whole wheat cookies. If I was to use all whole wheat my husband would notice and say something. All whole wheat would not just change the flavor but also the texture of the cookie.

Baking Soda

This recipe uses only baking soda not powder. Baking soda is a leavening agents for quick rises, you may remember your science experiments with vinegar (acidic) and your baking soda (alkaline) when mix together create carbon dioxide bubbling all about. To create a similar reaction in our cookies we will use brown sugar as our acidic ingredient, not vinegar. The acid from the brown sugar does not mix with the baking soda until they are cooking and the butter is melting everything. This is when the carbon dioxide is released and therefore imprints air pockets in the cookie creating a chewy, not dense cookie. Too much baking soda can result in a crumbling crisp texture and too little will create a dunce cake like texture.

Salt

Don’t forget salt, just a the right amount of salt makes everything better. It brings out the flavor in the blandest of ingredients and makes the simplest of foods feel rich.

Cinnamon

Just a little added flavor to create another layer of enjoyment. Cinnamon and raisins are a perfect classic combination, along with brown sugar and molasses, how can we go wrong! Do remember that the molasses has added a good amount of flavor. To little cinnamon and it wont be detected, too much and the flavors might fight for attention leaving your taste buds unsure of what’s going on.

Oats

I use both quick oats and rolled oats. The quick oats will absorbs more liquids and help bind the cookie together while still added texture. The rolled oats are the big chunks that add the soft chewy texture. I love the texture of rolled oats in my cookie and when baked just right with the brown sugar and butter coating the oats who can resist!

Raisins

Last but not least raisin. These sweet chewy raisins add flavor, texture and act like candy in these delicious cookies. My husbands favorite raisin is the golden raisin. Sometimes I use 1/2 golden and 1/2 regular and my family loves them! If you are one of those people that can’t enjoy raisins in a cookie and must have chocolate chips, be my guest and make the switch. As much as I love chocolate chips in my cookies a pure oatmeal raisin gives me great pleasure. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies bring back beautiful child hood memories that could never be replaced, not even by chocolate chips.

How To Make Oatmeal Raisin Molasses Cookies

• Step 1 mix butter and brown sugar.     
  This step is important. Mixing the butter and sugar together first creates air the butter batter. The sugar gets covered so that the reaction between the baking soda and sugar happens when the butter melts.

• Step 2 Add the rest of the wet ingredients.    
  Add eggs, molasses, applesauce and vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture.

• Step 3 mix dry ingredients.   
  You can mix all the dry ingredients together and add one cup in at a time but it’s most important that the baking soda, salt and cinnamon are mixed with the flour. This way the mix more evenly throughout the dough. The oats can be added after and raisins last.
  • Add flour, salt,baking soda and cinnamon at the same time.
  • Add quick oats and rolled oats q cups at a time till mixed evenly.
  • Add raisins (or chocolate chips) you can also add some nuts for extra chunky texture.

• Step 4 Form Cookie Dough Balls to Bake!
  You can use a cookie dough scoop for more uniform size cookies. I personally just use a spoon. I do want to make sure my dough is tight and holding together. If its too lose the cooking will crumble and fall apart when picked up.

How to Freeze Cookie Dough

This recipe make a large batch (5 dozen cookies) of cookies dough. I typically eat a bunch of dough, bake half and freeze the other half to bake at a later date.

You can freeze your dough a couple different ways.

Frozen Cookie Dough Roll

• To do this I get a cookie tray length piece of either plastic wrap, parchment paper or even wax paper will work. I place spoon fulls of dough on the plastic/paper and form it into a log roll. You want the roll to be around 1.5 inches wide. This way when we go to bake cookies we can cut the roll into slices the perfect size for a cookie.
• After I roll in in the paper or plastic I roll it again in tin foil or place in a Ziploc bag. This will keep it air tight and protect from freezer burn.
• Write the name of the cookie dough and baking instructions for quick reference on the bag or foil.
• You can store in the freezer for 3-6 months and thaw out for 10 minutes before cutting into it to bake.

Frozen Cookie Dough Balls 

• On a baking sheet place some wax or parchment paper. Scoop cookie dough on the paper as if you were to make them, but you can place them closer together since we will freeze them and not bake them yet.
• Freeze you cookie dough for 30 minutes to an hour. Then you can put all the cookie dough balls in a freezer Ziploc bag and keep in the freezer for 3-6 months.
• Don’t forget to write the name, date and baking instructions on the bag for quick reference.

I truly hope you enjoy these cookies as much as my kids do! If you have questions or comments please share below. I’m always to happy to hear how my recipes work (or don’t work) for other people.