Maple-Honey Spice Cookies

Sunday, February 22, 2009

I wanted to make some thank-you cookies this evening and decided that this would be perfect for the Alternative Sweeteners Challenge.  I had a recipe I wanted to try adapting.  I thought it would be easy, since I saw that it called for honey and molasses; I’d just substitute maple syrup for molasses.  Then I noticed that it also called for more than twice as much sugar as honey and molasses combined.  I did a bit more adapting, but I stuck with my local honey and maple syrup.  If I were going to make them again, I might use a lighter honey—I love the honey flavor and the way it mixes with the spices, but the maple syrup got a bit overwhelmed.  (This batch includes my go-to honey, which is fairly dark.)

Maple-honey spice cookies
1/2 c butter
3/4 c maple syrup
1 egg
2 1/3 c flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
2 t ginger
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t black pepper
1/4 t cardamon
1/4 t mace
1/4 c chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Melt butter and then combine all ingredients.  Drop onto greased baking sheets and bake 10 minutes.  They spread quite a bit, so I only got 8-10 cookies per sheet.  My batch made 32 cookies.

The cookies are on the fluffy side of chewy, which wasn’t precisely what I was hoping for, but they went over well with my neighbors, so I’d say they count as a success.