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You can never have too many recipes for hermit cookies

One evening while freezing in the stands at our sons’ football game a friend and I got talking about cooking. And then we got talking about molasses which is how this five-star recipe made it into my hands.

It seems that everyone has a favourite molasses recipe and as Janel described the chewiness of these hermit cookies, and the orange glaze that gets drizzled over top, I suspected they’d become a favourite of mine too.

Janel is a meticulous curator of recipes and has a recipe cataloging system I can only dream of. I don’t know about you but my recipe “system” consists of recipe cards and printed out pages piled in the middle of the dining room table, torn-out pages from magazines stuffed in other books, folded down page corners in cookbooks and comments scribbled alongside recipes.

But back to Janel, she was able to pluck this recipe out of her archives. It’s from America’s Test Kitchen, Holiday Cookies (2010).

Chewy Hermit Cookies with an Orange Glaze

Makes about 3 dozen

Cookies:

• 2 cups flour
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 cup raisins or currants
• 2 Tbsp. crystalized ginger (optional)
• ½ cup butter
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. allspice
• ¾ cup packed dark brown sugar
• ½ cup Crosby’s Fancy Molasses
• 2 eggs

Glaze:

• 1 ½ Tbsp. orange juice whisked with ¾ cup icing sugar

Instructions:

1. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.
2. Toss raisins and candied ginger in a food processor and whiz until finely chopped. (Don’t worry if they end up in one big gob.)
3. Melt butter in a saucepan and add spices, stirring until fragrant.
4. Add raisin mixture to the butter mixture and mash with a wooden spoon until well combined.
5. Add brown sugar, molasses and eggs and stir until well combined.
6. Fold in flour mixture then refrigerate until firm (an hour or so).
7. Scrape dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide evenly into four pieces.
8. Roll each piece into a 10-inch log and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. You’ll likely only be able to fit two or three on a baking sheet at a time. They’ll spread during cooking and you don’t want them to touch.
9. Bake for 15-20 minutes, watching closely during the last few minutes of baking so the edges don’t brown.
10. When cool drizzle with glaze and cut on the diagonal into bars.

We have oodles more hermit recipes…

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Make this recipe delicious with Crosby's Molasses.