Alpha Bakers - Molasses Cookies

I spend last weekend in Orlando, alternately tearing up about the power of literature and the injustice of the world, and laughing at the various Harry Potter wands my fellow librarians couldn't help buying. That's the American Library Association Annual conference in a nutshell. That and some tequila shots with un-named but quite famous children's author-illustrators. 

Conferences are a strange, sometimes inspiring, sometimes soul-killing zone, so I'll leave it at that except to say that of the hotels I saw, the pool at the Hyatt Regency by the Orlando conference center leaves the rest of them in the shade, and it's probably worth shelling out a bit extra to stay there. 

Last year's ALA Annual was full of beauty and celebration (San Francisco! Tartine Bakery! Gay Marriage!). This year was a more somber and sorrowful assessment of everything we've achieved and everything we've lost along the way. We are all still working, as writers and publishers and librarians, to be stronger, more dangerous, and more courageous for those we serve and those we tell stories to.

Now, the story of these molasses cookies is that I made them back in 2014, but saved the photos in a blogger draft, knowing this day would come. If anyone were to scroll through the six year history of this blog, they would see that molasses/ginger cookies are one of my most frequently made and obsessed-over baked goods. Rose's version has chewy and cracked down pat, and I'll be making them again soon when NYC isn't a sweaty swamp.