Mole Day, Molasses

Happy Mole Day! For those of you who do not dwell in the realm of nerd-dom and science teaching, where any excuse to get excited about something excessively nerdy is glommed onto and celebrated to an unnecessary extent is welcome, Mole Day is October 23, which relates to 6.0 x 1023, the number of molecules/atoms in the unit of measurement “one mole”. If this fact zipped by your head now (and also back in high school), you are in the overwhelming majority of all people who have ever lived, including most of my students. (It’s bad enough when you’re talking about “atoms”, which can’t be seen with the naked eye, but it gets that much worse when you talk about them in such vast numbers that they can no longer be discussed with numbers we like such as 1, 10, or even 100, and must now be represented using a number that is so far beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend that it loses all meaning, and we make it even more meaningless by using scientific notation. . . and then eventually fractions get involved. . . you can see why all of this might get confusing for students. All of which is funny, since the unceasingly confusing concept of the mole is what allows us to go back to numbers like 1. Which are nice.) Perhaps I like this unit because it is strikingly similar to the idea of a dozen, and that always reminds me of baking.

This discussion of mind-blowing concepts seems particularly appropriate now that we have entered the part of the school year where the warm and fuzzy getting-to-know each other gentle introduction to new classes is over and we are into the serious business of learning. And when I say learning, I mean the kind of mind-twisting, headache-inducing struggle that in my mind denotes a genuine intellectual revelation. Perhaps my students wish this was not my attitude towards learning, but the results that come of this are so interesting, and I often think that a student can pay me no higher a compliment than saying, “Your class is so hard! I actually have to think!”

Recently, I have been so wound up and unable to stop thinking myself and actually concentrate on business matters that I have found myself in need of some active relaxation (that might sound like an oxymoron, but relaxation has never been my strong suit). Therefore, I once again turned to baking. In anticipation of a weekend workshop with some near and dear fellow teachers and the coincidence with the aforementioned Mole Day, one of my colleagues suggested that I brighten everyone’s fall by baking. . . Mole-asses cookies. It was too funny to pass up and I needed the excuse to get into the kitchen and whip something into shape, even if it was just eggs and butter. At least with baking, I can usually control the outcome (and with students, sometimes there is no telling).

This recipe reminds me a lot of gingersnaps, except that there is a lot less ginger and a lot more molasses. These seem like the perfect cookies for the crisp sunny fall weather: chewy, spicy, and a little bit sweet, but also not the kind of thing that puts you into an immediate food coma remarkably similar to hibernation. I had to look on-line for a recipe because my plentiful supply of cookbooks didn’t have anything that fit the Mole Day joke, but of course being the opinionated baker I am, I made my own modifications. I don’t actually know what the original recipe would taste like, but this one was pretty good.

Wet ingredients:
¾ cup butter, melted (the recipe said margarine, but I staunchly and probably irrationally refuse to bake with margarine. To get the butter nice and soft, I just put it on the stove top where the hot air from the stove vents—it reaches a nice consistency very quickly without fully melting)
½ cup white sugar (I split the sugar between the types. Original recipe only had white sugar)
½ cup light brown sugar (a very nice flavor with the molasses and spices)
¼ cup molasses

Dry ingredients:
2 cups all-purpse flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger

(I would like to take a time out to mention that it is probably a fair statement about my obsessive buying of baking ingredients to say that I am rarely in any doubt as to whether I have the last three ingredients above. The answer is unequivocally yes).

Flourishes:
½ cup white sugar

Part 0: Pre-heat
I have a funny joke from a student about this, but I’m saving it for a future post. At this point, you want your oven at 375°F. You will also need a couple of baking sheets, but you don’t need to grease them (the vast quantities of butter in the recipe are quite sufficient to prevent any cookie-glued-to-the-sheet action).

Part 1: Warm up
Mix together the melted/soft butter, the sugar from the “wet” ingredients (1 cup total), and the egg. Put some elbow grease into it. Make a nice smooth mixture, and if you used brown sugar and have any lumps, try to get rid of them. Stir in the molasses (feel free to spend a few seconds making fun marbled patterns before you fully mix it)
Separately, combine all of the dry ingredients (not the extra half cup of sugar from the “flourishes”). I find it immensely satisfying to make a tower of dry ingredients with different colors and consistencies in my bowl and stare at them for a while before mixing, but the eventual goal is to mix them.
Mix the two mixtures together (nerdy science question: what kind of mixture do you have? If you’ve memorized the ninth grade physical science textbook, you may be tempted by such words as “colloid” and “suspension”. I wouldn’t want to inhibit your creativity by confining you to such limited words, though). As the wet and dry get more integrated, it can be a little difficult to get all of the dry ingredients incorporated, but you don’t want anything left out so make sure you get all the pockets of dry ingredients stirred in. Dig deep.

Part 2: Chill out
Cover the dough and let it chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour (give or take the timing that fits your busy schedule—I rarely actually time these things and move onto the next step whenever I get bored or run out of other things to do).

Part 3: Into the oven!
When you remove the dough from the refrigerator, you will need a small bowl or something with the remaining white sugar in it. Roll the dough into small balls (“walnut” sized says the recipe, or something approximately a large marble. If you make the first batch an inconvenient size, you will realize this when you remove them from the oven, and you can join the time honored tradition of hoping no one ever knows about the first batch). Roll each ball of dough in the sugar to create a light dusting.
Place the cookies about 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet (this seemed excessive to me at first, as it always does when I make cookies, but they really flatten out a tremendous amount).
Bake for about 8-10 minutes in your preheated oven. You want to take them out when the tops are cracked and you can just barely see a slightly darker brown on the bottom. It is really important not to bake them too long because you will then end up with hockey pucks or dog treats rather than the nice chewy cookie that we are aiming for. (How do I know if they are ready to come out or not? you may ask. . . look for the signs above, I say)

Part 4: Cool down
Cool on wire racks or paper towel or whatever you want. Try to let them cool enough that you don’t immediately burn your entire mouth. They cool down quite fast, and store well in an airtight container, in the fridge, or in the freezer.

The recipe claimed they are good for shipping. I haven’t tried this yet, although I can think of a few friends who might be in line for the next batch. However, they seem to have survived being manhandled through airport security in a Ziploc bag with minimal crushing or flaking (unusual for many cookies, which turn instantly to a crumby mess). The absurdity of carrying a large Ziploc full of cookies across the country just for a funny science joke didn’t really hit me until I was on my seat in the airplane getting some very bizarre looks from the people around me.