Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

From Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, "Baking:  From My Home to Yours," here's a delicious example of her Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies.

A few of my co-workers had colds this past week, and in order to circumvent those germs lodging into my system, I made a huge pot of chicken soup with turmeric, ginger, chicken bone broth, etc. After being on this liquid preventative cure for brunch, lunch, and dinner, I was starving for a carb. Ha!

It was snowing and blowing outside, and I thought, molasses cookies sound perfect about now.  After an in-depth cleaning of my kitchen cabinets last weekend, I knew I had molasses in the house so it was a go.

I have Dorie's cookbook (I even met and talked to her at a book signing!), but rather than write it out here, I wanted to link to her website.  Unfortunately, because the recipe is old, it doesn't appear that it's included on the site.  Instead, here's a link to epicurious.com which does.  Enjoy the warming, winter spices of these delicious cookies!

Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

Blueberry Crumble Pie

Howdy!  It's been 12,000 years since I posted anything to Listen to Me Pie Lady!  I've been busy making art most of this year so my pie making has been waylaid.

Here's a pie I hadn't tried before from Epicurious, although I use my own pie crust recipe.  My neighbor Sue has a gallery in which I was the featured artist back in November (click here to see my artwork if you'd like (-;).  ANYWAY, here husband, John, helped me carry all my packed up crates and paintings out to his SUV and my car and drove them to my house.  I promised him a pie, he said blueberry thinking it was a little healthier than the bourbon pecan pie I had suggested, and I thought I'd do a little twistipoo to it with this crumble recipe.  It sure smelled good as I zipped to over to them. I just took it out of the oven and the cold air blew it's cinnamon and lemon scents back at me.  Here's a few pics of it going in and coming out.  Thanks again for the help, John!

Goin' in.

Comin' out.

I'll add some chocolate chip cookies I made earlier in the day, too:

Blueberry Throw-Together Pie for a Sunday Night

I intended to make something a bit unusual for my final pie for July, which I mentioned in my last post, is National Blueberry Month.  I was going for something from www.epicurious.com called a blueberry crumble pie, but the evening was getting later and I stared down at my hastily written recipe sheet in despair.  I had written the ingredients in a chaotic matter (just the way my mind works), but then I started coding the order with plain circles and filled in dots and thought, uh, yeah, there's no way.  I reverted back to a simple recipe from the Pioneer Woman's blog, but she used nutmeg and I used cinnamon.  I threw in dark brown sugar and baker's sugar plus a little vanilla salt.  And so it went...  And when I say "threw" I mean it.  I really didn't measure anything...just small handfuls of this and that (what I just described).  Cookies and cakes need to be exact in baking, but you can be a little more free with pies.

Anyway, you know why I call this "Blueberry Throw-Together Pie!"  I think it's a beauty!  (-;

Ugh--not enough time for this recipe!  I'll just throw it together!

I used 3 pints of blueberries.

Blueberries coated with baker's sugar, cinnamon, dark brown sugar, vanilla sea salt, thickener.

Heaped into the first crust.

 Going into the oven!  That lump left of center is some butter that's going to seep right down into those blueberries!

The requisite cinnamon pie crust rolls made with leftover pie dough.  My grandma's tradition!

Finished and lookin' might fine!  Look at that thickened, blueberry juice seepage!  Mmm.