I (Jamie) am not a cookbook author who can usually talk much about how a given recipe connects to my culture, or to my family history. As a white american, I don't really have much culture to call my own -- my ancestors came from many different parts of Europe, and …

My family has been making these molasses cookies for years, using a photocopied page from an old issue of Cook's Illustrated. After a bit of trial and error, I figured out a fairly simple way to make them vegan. These cookies absolutely put the "spice" in "molasses spice", and use …

This is actually one of the first recipes that got me (Jamie) into cooking! I started making it for club events in college, and people loved it! I experimented a lot with tweaks to get the best consistency, and eventually landed on this recipe here.

Believe it or not, the …