These molasses cookies are the ideal lunchbox cookie, the most delightful cookie and coffee combo, and the sweet fix you want after dinner!

These are not my grandmother's molasses cookies. I know some people say that and they mean it as they are better than their grandmother's fill-in-the-blank recipe. But I do not mean that. These are really, really good cookies, but they're not my grandmother's. I have scoured the internet. Asked my family for her recipe. I've come up empty-handed. My grandmother Ruth did not follow a recipe card. She made them from memory every time...and therefore her recipe is lost with her. That doesn't mean I'll stop hunting for it, though!

Molasses cookies, for some reason that I don't really understand, have a tendency to be dubbed a holiday cookie. Maybe it's the flavor of ginger that makes people think of Christmas trees, deep snowbanks, and crackling fires....that, for me, is not the case, though. When I was a very little girl (my grandmother died when I was still in elementary school), we used to go over to her house often. My memories of her involve her always holding a tissue in her hand or stuffed in a pocket. The red retro booster chair in the corner of her kitchen. Her basement that was fitted with couches and an old bar and a million odds and ends (I used to play shop down there). Her beautiful backyard with its green grass, rock wall, and shady trees. The beaded bell ornaments she put on her Christmas tree every year. Her creamy potatoes and peas. The children's book by the couch that featured a bulldozer going through a city. And of course, her molasses cookies that held up when dunked in a glass of milk...for a few seconds, at least.