Swedish Spice Cookies with Sous Pastry Chef Girl

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup softened unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
1 large egg
1/4 cup molasses

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line ungreased baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together flour, baking soda, spices and salt; set aside.

Beat butter and 1 cup of the sugar in large bowl of electric mixer on medium-high speed until light (about 1 minute). Add the egg and molasses; mix well.

Stop the mixer and add the flour mixture. Mix just until combined.

Using about 1 Tbsp. of the dough for each, roll the dough into balls.

We use long iced tea spoons (heaping) to scoop the dough out of the bowl. It’s very important to make them all as close to the same size as possible, so that they will all cook at the same rate.

Roll in the remaining 1/4 cup of granulated sugar so that they are fully coated. Arrange on baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart. If you prefer a thin, crisp cookie, they may be flattened with a glass that has been dipped in sugar.

At our house, we prefer cookies that are crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle, so we do NOT do the glass-flattening step, but place them on the cookie sheets in “balls”. Watch the cookies carefully as they bake – you want them to just be starting to “crust” a little on the outside, but still be a little soft in the middle. It’s a very fine line, for these cookies, between “chewy/delicious” and “tough/scorched”. You want to pull them out of the oven before they start to darken too much. They will spread a bit as they bake and “crack” open on their tops.

Bake until set (about 11 minutes). I bake two cookie sheets at a time, so I switch the sheets from the bottom oven rack to the top oven rack halfway through the baking time, so that they don’t get too well done on either the bottom or the tops of the cookies. If you bake one tray at a time and don’t do this little “switcheroo”, they will take less time (about 9 – 10 minutes) to bake in total, since the oven won’t be opened and have a chance to cool down.

Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool. Makes about 3 dozen. Store in an airtight container and eat them within one week.

These are a great spicy, winter-y cookie, but they are just as delicious in the summer (with lemonade) as they are in the winter (with a frosty glass of milk or hot cup of coffee for dunking). These make a great holiday gift, too.