Trick or treat

Parenthood gives you a whole new perspective on a lot of things.  Some of them are obvious from the start.  Others sneak up on you.  Daylight savings time, for instance.  There was a time when my only thought about it was that I'd get an hour more or less sleep.  Not so with kids.  For one thing, even if they can tell time, their internal clocks don't care.  So it was just me who felt really annoyed that the clock said 6:45 when they got up on Sunday morning.  Then everyone was thrown off for the day, and ended up being tired and cranky despite the "extra hour of sleep."  Yeah, right, like anyone got any extra sleep on Sunday. =)  It took forever to get Gillian to nap, and then it was really hard to get her to go to sleep that night.  Brianna was also really tired, but good luck getting her to admit that and actually take a nap.  The time change was definitely the "trick" part of my weekend.

The treat was actually being home on Saturday, which meant that I was able to join several people via Twitter to make Dorie's Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies.  Technically these are the TWD selection for November 17th.  But our fearless leader Laurie is allowing us to post out of order this month.  (thank you!)  The person responsible for this pick is one of my favorite bloggy friends, Pamela of Cookies with Boys.  Thank you, Pamela, for picking something delicious that I was able to fit into my crazy life right now.

This really is a great cookie recipe.  Chewy and spicy, with a hint of heat from a bunch of ginger and a bit of black pepper.  One suggestion--be sure to check your supply of molasses before you start mixing.  The recipe calls for half a cup.  I only had about a third of a cup of mild molasses, so I used dark for the rest.  The dough was easy to mix together, and just required a short stay in the fridge (or freezer) to firm up.  I disregarded the instructions for forming the cookies, though.  Instead of dividing the dough into pieces, I simply used my #40 disher to scoop up balls of dough.  (I got 28.)  I rolled them smooth between my hands, then rolled them in vanilla sugar.  For the first pan, I totally missed the instruction to flatten the dough balls with a glass.  I was quite happy with the results, though, so I didn't bother with it on the subsequent pans.  I baked the cookies (9 to a sheet, since Dorie warned us that they spread a lot) for about 14 minutes.  I let them cool on the sheet pan for about 5 minutes, then transferred them to a rack to cool the rest of the way, and tried to restrain myself from tasting them while they were still hot.

The verdict?  These are really fantastic!  I love spice cookies, and these are wonderful.  I couldn't really taste the pepper, but there is a hint of something there that you can't quite identify.  My cookies were nice and chewy, but you could bake them a bit longer if you prefer crisp cookies.  I made the full recipe, but ended up taking some to work on Monday to share, because these are way too dangerous to keep a full batch around.  I've already eaten more than my fair share.  Jamie really liked them as well.  As usual, my spice girl Gillian liked them too, but Brianna wasn't sure.  I'll definitely be making these again!

Pamela will have the recipe up on her blog in a couple weeks, but you can also find it here.  (Edited to add--You can find the recipe here on Pamela's blog.)  Be sure to check out Pamela's blog anyway, for the great food and wonderful pictures of her two little boys.  =)  And head over to the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll so you can check out everyone else's creations for this week.  And of course, I have to share pictures of my little trick-or-treaters. =)