Sugar and Spice Cookies

Let me start with a disclaimer: we have actually been really healthy eaters as of late. I have mostly limited my baked-good making to healthy muffins and breads. I feel all warm and fuzzy when I send Jeffrey off to school with a blueberry oatmeal muffin or pumpkin pancake rather than a poptart. True, we usually add chocolate chips to the pancakes, but still...

Yet this recipe is definitely a dessert, no other way of looking at it. Yet it's also a wonderful, Christmasy cookie, and ever since our storage unit got flooded, prompting me to put up our Christmas tree several weeks early, Christmas has been on my mind.

Now, Jeffrey isn't usually much of a cookie-eater, but this recipe is possibly his favorite. It comes from his childhood best friend's mother, and it is super quick, easy, and delicious. AND it makes your house smell wonderful! So without further ado:

Sugar and Spice Cookies

Look at me! I totally did one of those "I'm going to take a picture of all the ingredients" pictures! Mostly I wanted to take a picture of the shortening sticks to comment on how I LOVE that they exist! I don't often bake with Crisco, but I would never use it if I still had to scrape it out of the giant tin cans.

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp cloves
• 3/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt

Cream together the first 4 ingredients: shortening, sugar, egg, and molasses (isn't molasses gloopy?)

Sift together the dry ingredients and then add to the creamed mixture. Combine well. (Full disclosure here: I rarely actually sift the dry ingredients together. Ergo there's no picture. I just added them individually to the same bowl. I just haven't ever noticed a difference from when I do sift and don't, you know?)

Form into walnut-sized balls and place on cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes. If using a dark or coated pan (like I did), reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Actually, I reduced mine to about 360, which was perfect. But since when does a recipe ever tell you to bake things at 360? Never. Better not start now. Something drastic could happen.

They should come out cracked on the top and soft. I removed mine fairly promptly from the pan to cool, and they came out perfect. This recipe usually yields 20-24 cookies.

They're so good, I promise, and are disappearing embarrassingly fast from our house. Mmm...