I did not quite follow the recipe, but these came out absolutely perfect - texture, moisture, chewiness so I'll post the changes I made. I omitted the sugar and did 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce plus 1/4 cup water. I used all whole wheat flour. I did not use any coffee, and I did not do the icing. No raisins. 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 ea of cloves and nutmeg (I'm a big fan of cinnamon, but this smaller amount combined with the nutmeg and cloves was perfect). For shortening I did half of it as unsalted butter, and half of it as evirgin coconut oil. Since there's no sugar, I added a little of the flour and used a fork to 'cream' the butter into the rest of the ingredients. These were so amazing we were all blown away (I had a strong craving for molasses and whipped this up not knowing what to expect). No dryness, no crumbling, no sticking. Just perfect. This is SO simple to make (esp without coffee part) and just absolutely lovely texture. Be sure to lightly rub a stick of butter around your pan (i used a thick ceramic 10x10 dish) and baked 25 min. 2nd rack from bottom of oven for baking. It will seem really thick to spread (and thin) for the pan but it turns out great. Here is the key: SERVE with CREAM drizzled generously over it- WOW wow wow. Not too sweet, simple, heavenly flavors. I'm planning to transform a few of these squares into icecream sandwiches with some homemade french vanilla cream- can't wait!

WOW, these are way too sweet for me. I think they would be good without the frosting, but when I put the frosting on I couldn't stand to eat them, they're just so sweet.

very strong molasses flavor...frosting is great with the coffee flavor!!

the batter was beautiful, so smooth, tasted great... but the bars were dry. still soft, just not moist like i thought they would be. i even took them out of the oven 5 minutes early. the frosting is great, could eat that by the spoonful. i may experiment a bit with ingredients to fix this recipe. it is worth saving.

These bars were very good. I was afraid the coffee would make them taste more like mocha than molasses but they didn't. They were nice and moist. However, I didn't care for the frosting. It had a coffee after taste and I don't care for coffee. I still rate this recipe a 5 because the bars were excellent