Jane, someone wrote to me and asked the same thing. I haven't tried that, but I ran across a recipe from a Sunset magazine that is similar, but with orange instead of lemon and with dried cranberries. The recipe was the winner of a Sunset cookie bake-off contest so it must be very good. Dried cranberries are good in muffins, so why not cookies. I doubt it would spoil the taste at all. If you try it please let us know how they turn out. Jen

The cookie part of the Toll House recipe is a good brown sugar recipe. You can probably get away with substituting brown for half of the white sugar. The baking time will be different without chips. Or you could get a sugar bear and put it in with your brown sugar, or a piece of clean clay flower pot. Or do you have a truly air tight canister? I don't know how long my brown sugar had been sitting when I took it out the other day. Probably the better part of a year. I put it in a small canister, just big enough, in the liner bag (recycled the box), rolled down at the top. It was amazingly dry and fluffy! In fact, the sugar in the new box was a little clumpier. I was awestruck! It was an OXO pop canister. I used to just roll the liner and put the whole box in a Ziploc. Big difference. No clay in with it, but a terra cotta sugar bear also works. I don't have the recipe for brown sugar molasses cookies, but this looks good: http://www.joyofbaking.com/MolassesCookies.html

I made these a couple of years ago. They were good and different. Everyone does regular cutouts and so this was different and my friends who I gifted with cookies seemed to be appreciative to see something different than regular cutout cookies. Martha Stewart's Dark Chocolate Cutout Cookies It's a Martha Stewart Recipe: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature 1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar 1 large egg, lightly beaten 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract Nonpareils, for sprinkling (optional) DIRECTIONS 1. Sift flour, cocoa powder, salt, and cinnamon into a bowl. 2. Put butter and confectioners' sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. mix in egga nd vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Gradually mix in flour mixture. Wrap dough in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until firm, 1 hour or overnight. 3. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick. Transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Chill in freezer 15 minutes. 4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Using a 3-inch cookie cutter, quickly cut out shapes from dough (if dough begins to soften, chill it in freezer 3 to 5 minutes). Reroll and cut scraps. Transfer shapes to prepared baking sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Brush flour from shapes. Sprinkle with nonpareils, if using. Chill in freezer until firm, about 15 minutes. 5. Bake cookies until crisp, about 9 minutes. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks. Cookie can be stored betwween layers of parchment in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

Leavening/soda makes dough rise. Proving/proofing shows that the yeast is alive (not an issue with dry granulated yeast, but absolutely necessary for cake yeast and starters). Rising is what the dough does. Commercial bakers nowadays proof yeast in the dough while it rises because the yeast is so reliably alive that they skip the step where you feed the yeast and make sure it bubbles up before wasting a batch of flour on it, which is the original meaning of proofing your yeast. They just look at the risen shaped loaves to see the proof. This has become so prevalent that bakers are using the word proof and rise interchangeably. You raise your hand and your crops, and rear your children. :)