Olivia Piepmeier

Five Spice Cookies

← Recipes

Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Category: dessert
A watercolor illustration of a brown cookie with some noticible crackles on top. It's surrounded by random brushstrokes of purples, light blue, and shimmery gold. Directly above the cookie *HER* is written in gold.

inspired by Gimme Some Oven

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cups (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup unsulphured molasses (mixing maple syrup + honey is a fine replacement but will make a lighter cookie in color and taste)
  • 1 egg
  • 270g AP flour
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 tbsp Five Spice (I use Badia but you could also make your own..recipes and brands vary!)
  • 1 teaspoon diamond crystal salt
  • 1/8 cup sugar (for rolling)

Directions

  1. In a medium bowl, mix the dry stuff.
  2. Using a separate mixing bowl (a stand mixer with paddle attachment or a hand mixer will help here) cream softened butter and sugars on medium-high until light and fluffy and a pale yellow color, scraping the sides as needed. This may take 2 minutes or so?
  3. Add the egg and mix on medium-low until combined.
  4. Add the molasses (or maple syrup/honey combo) and mix on medium-low speed for a minute or so. This will look a little curdled, don’t worry.
  5. Gradually add in the dry ingredients and beat until uniform.
  6. Cover the mixing bowl well (or put it in a separate container if your fridge doesn’t have enough space) and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
  7. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  8. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper/silpat.
  9. Put the 1/8 cup sugar in a wide bowl or plate.
  10. Use a 1 tsp cookie scoop to form each cookie (1 tbsp scoop is also a good size!) then roll it in the sugar for a mostly even coating.
  11. Place dough balls on the prepared baking sheet, leaving them an inch of space between.
  12. Bake for about 8-10 minutes for teaspoon size (tablespoon size is 12-13 mins), until the cookies begin to slightly crack on top. You definitely want to err on the underbaked side (unless you’re some sort of weirdo that likes dry overbooked cookies..).
  13. While the first batch is baking, you can continue to roll out and coat the rest. Put them in the fridge until you’re ready to bake them - being cold really makes a difference to that chewy texture.
  14. When you remove them from the oven, let them cool on the pan for 5 minutes.
  15. Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool while you bake the rest.

Thoughts

These are the best. I can’t stop eating them. The recipe above is technically half of the original and this is for my own safety. They are spicy and tender and, particularly when you use a teaspoon scoop and roll the dough as stated, they actually look good! The aesthetics of cooking/baking are not really my thing, so these thrill me even more because they’re presentable.