Missing molasses

'Tis the season to be baking holiday treats and I couldn't think of anything more festive to bake than gingerbread cookies. I just love soft and chewy gingerbread cookies! True those flat crispy disks you can get year around at Ikea aren't bad, but they're nothing compared to the soft gingerbread I had in Alsace, or the iced oval shaped cookies in Finland. So on my quest to make gingerbread, I had to find myself some molasses.

Apparently every other country EXCEPT France seems to carry molasses in regular stores. In the UK you can find treacle, and in Germany I've been told that it's also a common household staple. Whats with the French then? According to a French friend, after researching, it's reserved for animals or sometimes sold in health food stores "because it's disgusting". Well okay, I still needed some for my gingerbread cookies. Five Naturalia and three Bio Generation stores later, I broke down and went to the Thanksgiving store in the Marais to buy an overpriced (8euros!) bottle of American molasses.

What happened when I asked them at the health food stores if they carried molasses, you ask? They would say "oui, et non"... meaning yes they carry it, but no, they're out of stock. Someone must have had some sort of molasses grudge against me, or there's a Paris wide shortage. Nonetheless my cookies came out great, albeit not in the shape of a man (round is such a friendlier shape I think), and frosted with a thick layer of royal icing.