Growing up in my mom's house, these were my favorites of the various cookies and other treats that she made on a fairly regular basis.
I immediately gobbled up the peanut-butter balls, they are my favorites. The next day my roommate and I shared the chocolate chip cookies. We were then gone for a day doing things with the Drill team we were on, and the day following that we each had a couple of the molasses cookies after dinner.
I started feeling funny just a little bit after this, but it was spring and I associated it with pollen related hay fever and downed a few antihistamines and went to bed.
I woke up a couple hours later, choking as my throat was swelling up. I still associated the reaction with my pollen allergies, and downed another handful of antihistamines. It seemed to ease up a bit, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I woke up the next morning, eyes swollen shut and covered in hives. A trip to the ER revealed that the allergy was due to something else as the current pollen count was zippo.
Testing, trial and error revealed that the culprit was molasses. The trial and error was comprised of a combination of my eating another molasses cookie with the same allergic reaction, and a week later having BBQ ribs at a picnic.
Since then, I avoid molasses like the plague. I’ve only had one other time where I was covered in hives. A co-worker brought some holiday baking his wife had done into work, and I had a piece of this amazing bread she had made. Not even 15 minutes passed before I broke out in hives and asked him what was in the bread. You guessed it, molasses.
While I can scrape by if I take an antihistamine before eating something that has a trace amount of molasses in it, I try to avoid it if possible. There are one or two BBQ sauces out there without molasses, and in a pinch I make my own. Overall, I try to go the route of rubs for my meats rather than sauces.