Alyssa Hoffman remembers her great-grandmother through her cookies.

Her molasses crinkle cookies, to be exact.

 “She would always bring these cookies to the cabin at Donner Lake in California that my family would go to every Fourth of July week,” Hoffman, a senior at Whitworth University, said in a recent email to Too Many Cooks.

Her great-grandmother lived in Santa Cruz, California, and “would go out of her way to make you feel loved and important, and remember even the littlest things.

“She was the wisest, most caring woman I knew,” said Hoffman, who graduates in 2017.

Her  great-grandma died seven years ago at 94. Making her cookies is “just a really cool feeling of being able to keep her memories alive by doing what I love,” Hoffman said.

Granny’s Molasses Crinkles are “perfectly crisp yet chewy, sweet and spicy.

“They might seem like just another cookie recipe, but lately I have been thinking about how food is so much more than something we need to consume. And how baking is so much more than making sweet treats (and keeping a layer of fat to keep us warm in the frigid Spokane winters).

“For me, food is a way to bring people together. It is a way to make memories. And most importantly a way to say I love you.”

Here, Hoffman shares her grandmother’s recipe as well as another one of her own creation: buttery, soft-batch, cranberry, white chocolate chip cookies.

For more from Hoffman, visit her blog at heyitslyss.com. Her bio notes: “I like eating cookies for breakfast.”

 

Granny’s Molasses Crinkle Cookies

From Alyssa Hoffman at heyitslyss.com

For the dough

3/4 cup butter

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup molasses

2 ½ cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons ginger

2 tablespoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking soda

For Rolling

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/3 cup white sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter, mix with sugar, add egg and molasses. Stir all that together. Make a nice little mountain of all the dry ingredients on top of the wet mixture. Stir to combine.

Mix the cinnamon and sugar for rolling, plop dough balls into sugar, plop sugared dough balls onto greased cookie sheet, plop cookie sheet into oven, bake 9-12 minutes.

Note: This makes a pretty sticky dough. You can chill it if you want to make it easier to work with.

 

Chewy White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

From Alyssa Hoffman at heyitslyss.com

3 ounces plain cream cheese

10 tablespoons salted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2/3 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Soften butter and cream cheese. Add sugars and vanilla. Whip to combine. Stir in eggs. Add dry ingredients. Mix to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and cranberries

Place dough in rounded mounds on cookies sheet and chill for 20 or so minutes.

Bake about 10 minutes or until golden and dough looks set.  Do not overcook. Remove cookies from hot sheet and place on tray or rack to cool.

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