Feeding Friendship: Ginger

I picked this round of FF's featured ingredient: ginger. I mainly did this because I constantly have a small amount of ginger left over if I buy it fresh, even though I literally purchase about 25 cents worth of ginger at a time. I sort of intended to do a lot of research and make an Asian dish with ginger that's more complicated than the regular stir fry thing that I do, but my search on AllRecipes.com for "ginger" led me to cookies and I never looked back. Ginger is a flavor George likes a lot, but I like a big, soft cookie instead of a ginger snap. I was therefore very pleased to find this recipe for a soft ginger cookie that had great reviews. We had a combination birthday party today for all the November birthdays in my office (5!) so I figured that the cookies would go over well. George is always sad that I take most of my desserts to work, so I decided right off the bat to double the recipe because it said it makes "15 servings." Dear readers, if you are making this at home I'd say stick to one batch. I got over 50 cookies out of my doubled batch, which is a lot more than 15 cookies per batch.

With that in mind, let us begin. First lay your butter out to soften on the counter (you can also cheat with 15 seconds or less in the microwave). Then preheat the oven to 350. Once your butter is warm enough to be a little soft, cream it with 1 cup of white sugar until it's a consistent fluffy texture.

Fluffy!

Next, beat in 1 egg and 1/4 cup of molasses. I had never used molasses before this, and I think I will term it the new "culinary napalm." Pour with caution to avoid a sticky mess and rinse that measuring cup- STAT. 

Now in a different medium to large bowl, add and mix the dry ingredients: 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons ground ginger, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp salt, 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp baking soda. I thought about grating some fresh ginger for this, but I wanted a consistant texture without surprise ginger chunks that can be a little overpowering. 

 spices!

spices stirred into the flour

Slowly add your dry mixture to the other ingredients, beating as you go. A stand mixer is a real asset here, but I think that a single batch would be fine with a hand beater. This process basically aerosolized the ginger, which was a little intense. Apparently all it takes to make me think I'm smelling pumpkin pie is the combination of ginger and cloves :) When all your ingredients are incorporated and the texture is even, your dough is done. 

giving it a whirl

As you can see, my doubled batch came out a bit thick: 

anti-gravity ginger dough

...but this frankly just made it easier to roll into the required 1-inch diameter balls. Other reviews said they chilled their dough before shaping it, but I didn't find that necessary. After you've rolled the dough, put maybe a 1/8 cup of sugar (sugar in the raw might be fab here, I realized too late) in a little bowl or on a plate. Dip the top half of your cookie dough ball into the sugar and then knock of the excess before putting it on your cookie sheet with the sugar side up. 

applying the sugar topping

happy cookies-to-be

Then pop your dough in the oven for 10-12 minutes. I used parchment paper for some batches to prevent sticking, but they came out fine without it too. It's a little difficult to tell when they're done, since they're already slightly brown in color, but when they've spread out enough to make the sugar topping crack and they don't look very wet anymore, they're probably done. 

cookies are done! 

ready to serve

All in all these are a nice, fairly mild cookie that's soft and chewy. I was thinking I might splatter a few drips of chocolate over the top in the future and it would be tasty. These got the George stamp of approval, and my coworkers said they were better than the ones made by the other girl because they didn't have crazy ginger chunks, so my hunch paid off. They're not difficult to make and would be a hit at holiday parties.