Baking with Blackstrap Molasses

Our family loves molasses cookies! It's hard to find molasses in Honduras, however, and when you do find it, you pay dearly for it. Last year Allen was able to put a number of jars of molasses on our annual shipping container. Since molasses doesn't go bad on the pantry shelf, this is a nice item to have stockpiled.

Some of the jars Allen bought contained the golden molasses I'm used to using, but some said they were "Blackstrap Molasses." Since Rachel and I aren't used to using this variety of molasses, I did a bit of internet research, and found that blackstrap molasses has a stronger taste, and can be a bit more bitter than regular molasses.

Rachel was baking molasses cookies this week, so I asked her to make two separate batches, using the regular molasses in one batch, and then using the blackstrap molasses (very carefully) in the other batch, so that she could figure how much of each was needed to acquire the same (or similar) taste in a recipe that was otherwise exactly the same.

Her results? She used 3/4 cup of regular molasses in one batch, and 1/2 cup of blackstrap molasses in the other batch, to get the tastes to match fairly closely. She did not adjust any of the other ingredients. The two batches of cookies looked slightly different. The ones using golden molasses had a bit of a golden color to them, while the blackstrap variety had a darker, grayish tint. The flavor was also slightly different. My taste testers inform me that the blackstrap cookies have a bit more of a "bite" to them, but that it's a "good bite." So, now you know.

Oh, and this post was supposed to include pictures of the cookies . . . but when I went to take a picture, they were all gone! Sorry about that!