Did I ever imagine I would be involved in a cookie swap party? Let alone a virtual one?  Well now I have, and I’m so glad I did!  Kat from She Cooks, He Eats has a super cute blog all about cooking—and a big fave of mine BACON!  She was nice enough to host a cookie swap party and after seeing some of the yummy suggestions by the other bloggers I knew I had to get in on this thing.

To view the original post with everyone’s cookie recipes you can click : here

Back to my cookies now……I decided on a sugar cookie with frosting and shape them all like makeup until I realized….whoops. This is for the holidays, so think Santa, think snow, ornaments…whatever.  I finally decided on the easiest and prettiest ones I found, Molasses and Spice Cookies.  You may have seen them called molasses cookies, ginger cookies–I’m not 100% sure this is the same as gingerbread but they are goooOOOOD! Just look at them 🙂

A Chewy spiced cookie that could easily be adjusted to the holiday by color of sugar sprinkles!

Servings: approx. 30

Materials Needed:

3/4 cup shortening

1 cup white sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

colored sugar in red and green from the baking aisle in the market

Directions:

1. melt the shortening in a pan on the stove, and cool.

2. Add sugar, egg, and molasses, beat well. I chose Grandma’s. Can you ever go wrong with grandma’s? C’mon…..

3.  In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together and add to the pan.  Mix well and chill at least 3 hours over overnight.  make note that it will be difficult to mix with any utensils–I eventually kneaded the dough together by hand until I saw no dry spots.

4. Form dough into walnut-sized balls and then roll them into your colored sugar.  Place on greased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.

5.  Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 8-10 minutes.

6.  Store in airtight container to keep from getting overly crisp.  Mine stayed soft and chewy for about 3 days …..before they disappeared!

Enjoy!  P.S  feel free to visit all around my blog and facebook page, I’m really a beauty product addict but really wanted to get in on all the cooking fun.  kat makes me wanna have a bakery filled with cool gadgets after seeing her gift guide posts!