Most every Labor Day, I set off to bike across Michigan with my father and my partner, usually a family friend or two. It’s one of my favorite events of the year.

The ride is DALMAC, a five-day, volunteer-run tour that’s been going on for 50 years. It’s a simple premise: you leave from Michigan’s state capitol, Lansing, and ride to the northernmost point of the lower peninsula, Mackinac City. The days are simple, too: you wake up, pack up, ride 70 miles, unpack, eat. You’re responsible for so little, just getting yourself from point A to point B, and there is great joy in that simplicity.[SF1]  There’s nothing more in the way of agenda, no long to-do list—just you, your bike, and Michigan.

In the good years, when the weather is fine*, DALMAC can convince you that Michigan is the most beautiful place on earth. The first two days take you through farmland, flat, green, fecund patches of earth. Then you come into the rolling hills of northern Michigan, with their foggy mornings and the sharp tangy smell of wild apples. By the fourth and fifth days, you’re skirting around the shore of Lake Michigan, catching glimpses of the clear blue water as you climb and dip and curve around vineyards and pastures and yet more farms. Every year, I catch myself wondering if there is any place more breathtaking than Michigan during the slide from summer into fall.

Michigan is indisputably lovely, but some of my sentimentality about DALMAC might also be due to the company of two of my favorite people (my dad and my partner) and some of it to the food, Midwestern cuisine at its finest. The food at camp might be utilitarian rather than gourmand, but the food along the route more than makes up for it. There’s the campground at Lake George with its huge, smoking grills full of brats, burgers, and hot dogs; the girls’ cross-country team that sells root beer floats outside of Marion; the Douglas Lake Bar and Steakhouse in tiny Pellston; the little church on the hilltop in East Boardman or the Good Hart General Store along the lake, both with endless rows of baked goods. And, last but not least, there is the thing that we ride for, the promise of which makes tired legs pump harder and any size hill seem manageable: the DALMAC molasses cookie.

Along every route, the tour organizers arrange a few rest stops along stretches where there aren’t many other options for food, and if you’re very lucky, the organizers will have cookies at a few of those stops. Let me tell you about these cookies: they are the size of your face. There are hundreds of them, in all the greatest-hits flavors—chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, and the sublime molasses. Your day’s riding might have been chilly or hilly; you might be close to bonking; your bum might be very, very, sore, but these cookies are magic. Bite into a thick molasses chomper and forget your woes; they’re soft, redolent with butter and spice; pleasantly but not-too sweet. These cookies are mythic: we talk about how good they are months after we finish the ride.

And if a cookie is that good, you’ve got to have it more than once a year, right? But frankly, I despaired of every making a molasses cookie as good as the ones I had on DALMAC. Fresh air, a ravenous appetite, and the golden glint of nostalgia make everything taste better. I tried here or there throughout the years, generally landing on something that was good but not great. Finally, however, I found the right formula: a generous but not overly so amount of spice; all brown sugar for deeper flavor, and just enough flour to give the cookies heft without impeding their buttery softness. They might not be quite as good as a DALMAC cookie eaten on an and-of-summer day in Michigan, but these come pretty close.

*For the sake of honesty, I must add that the weather is NOT always fine—there’s a reason we refer to the 2010 ride as “DALMAC of the damned.”

Molasses Cookies

Source: Adapted from The New Best Recipe

Makes ~9 or 10 four-inch cookies

Active time: ~30 minutes; total time ~45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 12 tablespoons butter, at cool room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (dark or light)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup molasses (dark or light but not blackstrap)
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar, for cookie rolling

Directions:

• Center two racks in the middle of your oven, then preheat it to 375°F. Line two baking trays with parchment paper; set aside.
• Cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture has lightened in color and texture. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, and molasses, and beat to combine. Scrape down the bowl.
• Add all of the dry ingredients (flour through salt), beating on the lowest speed to incorporate. Give the bowl a scrape to ensure that you’ve incorporated all of the dry ingredients, and mix again briefly, if needed.
• Portion the dough into 9 or 10 balls—it will be soft, so you may need to lightly wet your hands to prevent it from sticking. Roll the balls in the sugar, then transfer to the baking trays; give each dough ball plenty of space to expand.
• Put the trays in the oven and allow the cookies to bake for 5 or 6 minutes; rotate the sheets from top-to-bottom and side-to-side. Bake for an additional 5 or 6 minutes. When you pull the trays from the oven, the cookies should be set along the edges, lightly puffed and browned, but still a bit wobbly in the center. This is fine; a slightly undercooked cookie is always superior to a slightly overcooked cookie.
• Let the cookies cool as long as you can stand—I won’t advocate burning your mouth but they really are best when still warm. Anything you don’t immediately consume will keep well, covered on your counter, for a few days.