Chin Cookies and Molasses

[Lillybabe]

Okay... so I tried to make cookies for my chinchillas. Just an experiment. However, I lacked a binding agent and they completely fell apart. I also think that the lowest setting on my oven was too low. I baked them for over two hours and they were still moist.

All I added to them was some hay from the bottom of the bag from a few hay types, some hay cube dust, crushed hay cubes, a bit of crushed Oxbow pellets and water. I had hoped they would hold together like that, but obviously not. I was trying to make cookies that would be as safe for my girls as hay cubes or their current supplement since they are not even 4 months yet. I'd planned to give them very sparingly if they turned out. Mainly I had a surplus of unuseable hay and wanted to experiment.

Soooooo.. my quandry is people on here recommended blackstrap molasses. We have two brands of molasses here but neither of them specify blackstrap. However, the sugar count is the same as or lower than the nutrition information I found on blackstrap brands online. How much sugar is okay? I'd only planned to use enough to help hold everything together.

Any ideas? Tips? I've hunted for recipes but several have ingredients that I view as not safe for my girls. Like supplements, fruit, or oats. I don't think oats would hurt my girls as they came with some in the supplement I gave them when I first got them. However, I didn't think oats would be anymore helpful in binding things together than hay.

 

[momenteller]

I used a small amount of oat flour when I made mine. Can't remember the reasoning for blackstrap, but I did buy some specifically for the cookies.

ETA: I also added a small amount of cooked pumpkin.

 

[Lillybabe]

Kate, do you know how many grams of sugar your blackstrap molasses has/had? That'd help if I had something to compare these to. Even looking online it doesn't appear all the bottles actually say blackstrap on them. Will anything else work to bind them so they don't completely crumble?

 

[GorillaJTA]

Blackstrap is the last form of molasses after as much sugar has been removed and it still maintains its form.

 

[Lillybabe]

I understand how blackstrap works... but what is the difference nutrition wise? How do I know if what I am looking at is blackstrap or regular molasses? How much sugar content should I expect? What is too large an amount of sugar to use as a binding agent/very small amount in cookies?

 

[Snickers]

If you go into Amazon.com under search put black strap molasses it will bring them up. I did that about a month ago.

 

[ChinnyMom]

i make my hay cookies without any binder ingredients and they hold together. the trick is to squish them into as tight a ball as possible in your hand before putting them on the cookie sheet to bake, and then handling them fairly gently after baking. works for me.

 

[smhluvsmh]

Lillybabe... I also went looking all over the local stores and could not find a backstrap molasses or at least I thought I hadn't. I picked up one that said organic molasses on front but on the back in the ingredients it states it is organic backstrap molasses. Score! It has 10g of sugar in 1TBSP. Hope this helps. Also, organic steel cut oats ground into a fine power can be used as a binder.