My husband made cookies last weekend. I was skeptical when he showed me the recipe, because they seemed like a cross between a molasses cookie and a chocolate chip cookie, which seemed like an odd amalgam. 

Plus, the recipe specifically doesn’t call for vanilla, which seems like blasphemy. 

But they were perfection. 

The recipe is here. They are supposedly based on cookies sold by Levain bakery. (By the way, Levain bakery is a GREAT source of mail order gifts. A dear friend of mine sent up a package of four cookies a few years ago and I still think of them. They were enormous and thick and chewy and so flavorful. YUM. We have since sent them to a few people as gifts and they are always a hit.)

My husband measured the cookies into four-ounce balls (the recipe gives you options for four-, five-, or six-ounce cookies). He was able to make eight perfect four-ounce cookies (he weighed each one) and one slightly smaller cookie. Four ounces makes an ENORMOUS cookie. They were perfectly round, soft on the inside. And they were exactly like molasses cookies combined with chocolate chip cookies, which – it turns out – is a WONDERFUL amalgam. (If you like molasses cookies, I suppose.) I love that bite of ginger and the smokey undercurrent of molasses, which went perfectly with the creamy sweetness of the chocolate chips. YUM.

The only change my husband made to the recipe was that he refrigerated the balls of dough for 20 minutes before baking them. I think he also cooked them for a total of 12 minutes, turning them halfway through, but that’s because our oven seems to cook more slowly than most. (We discussed adding vanilla, because it seemed so WILD that there was no! vanilla!!!! in the recipe at all, but ended up deciding to stick to the recipe as written, at least for this time. We did not miss the vanilla.)

If you are looking for the perfect fall cookie, look no further. I am certainly bringing these to our next get-together with friends.