Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for ginger and treacle crinkle cookies gifts | The sweet spot

My tin of treacle sits in my baking cupboard for most of the year, untouched until the smell of Christmas is in the air, and then I really put it to work, leaving it permanently sticky with syrupy fingerprints. A good glug goes into these cookies before they’re rolled in two types of sugar to give them their beautiful crackled surface.

Ginger and treacle crinkle cookies

Prep 5 min
Rest 3 hr+
Cook 25 min
Makes 16–18

125g unsalted butter, melted
200g light muscovado sugar
50g treacle
1 large egg
260g plain flour
3 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp allspice or cloves
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
100g demerara sugar
150g icing sugar

Mix the butter and sugar in a bowl until combined, then stir in the treacle followed by the egg. In a second bowl, mix the flour, ginger, allspice, bicarb and salt.

Pour the dry ingredients into the wet, and stir to combine. Cover and chill in the fridge for three hours, and ideally overnight.

Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. Put the demerara sugar in a shallow bowl and the icing sugar in another.

Roll the cookie dough into 30g balls, then roll each one first in the demerara sugar and then generously in the icing sugar.

Put four to six balls on each tray, leaving space between them, because they’ll spread while cooking. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the edges are firm. Let them cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack and leave to cool completely. These will keep for six days in an airtight container.