Clark is home and that means our healthy eating takes a vacation.

No. Not really.

But it does mean that we make a few acceptions so he can enjoy some homecooked foods and desserts he loves. This time around he requested Molasses Cookies. A recipe I realized I hadn't shared, because I hadn't made them since before I started the blog. Which, at this point, was around 2.5 years. Crazy.

The great thing about these? You can make them for just about any season/holiday. I was so excited to use my Valentine's Day cookie cutters on something other than sugar cookies.

As always, if you don't want to devour these within the first few minutes after they cool, make sure to have storage containers ready to put them in and stash them away. Ours barely lasted 48 hours, thanks to visiting friends and Clark (ok... I had a couple).

This recipe requires you to refrigerate the dough for at least two hours.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 C butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 C packed brown sugar
- 2/3 C molasses
- 2.5 C all-purpose, unbleached flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves

For *optional* topping:
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

- Beat together your butter and brown sugar. Add your molasses.

- Mix together your dry ingredients. Slowly work them into your molasses mixture. It should end up being very crumbly.

- Cover your dough and refrigerate for at least two hours or as long as overnight. I did mine for the bare minimum and the dough was a little hard to handle, but worth it.

- Preheat your oven to 350 and prepare a cookie sheet.
- Roll out your dough to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch and cut them with cookie cutters in whatever shapes you like.
Note: Because the dough was so crumbly, the cookies were hard to handle when moving to and from the cookie sheet. I would suggest using a spatula to do this.
- Top the cookies with your *optional* cinnamon/sugar mixture
- Bake for 6 to 8 minutes. Move to a cooling rack and let sit for a couple of minutes.

Michael really wanted to try them. I was taking pictures and he snuck up and grabbed one before I could say no. I didn't even notice until I saw his hand coming into the picture! He's too precious.

Oh, and if you didn't notice, these are Vegan friendly! No eggs/dairy necessary! This recipe was adapted from the Williams-Sonoma Cookies book.

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