oh snap!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 
Who doesn’t love ginger snaps? But finding the perfect balance between sweet and spicy, chewy and crisp is precarious. I’d always been really dissatisfied with the choices I had of one of my favorite cookies so I set out to make my own version. Little did I know what a fragile science there was behind this holiday favorite. It’s taken me a year to refine, and many a botched batch of super thin cookies, but I’ve finally come up with a recipe of my own! Made of simple ingredients and lots of flavour, they turn out perfect each time.
I’d recommend you make them with friends, bring them as a hostess gift, or even just in to work. These cookies are too good to resist and you won’t want that temptation hanging around the house for long. Besides, it is the season of giving after all, so you might as well share the yummy yummy cookie love.
ingredients:
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
- 1 cup fancy molasses
- 3 cups whole grain all purpose & pastry flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp saigon cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
To start out you want to make sure that you have the butter at room temperature. Take it out of the fridge and leave it on the counter for an hour or so. You really shouldn’t skip this step (or pull a shortcut like putting it in the microwave or something). The temperature of your butter can make or break your cookies because of how they affect the creaming process. I could ramble about a bunch of science here, but just trust me, you want room temperature butter.
So when your butter’s unchilled add it into a big mixing bowl with the cup of molasses. Using a plastic spatula mix the 2 together thoroughly. This can be really taxing on your mixing arm to get all the butter broken down and mixed in. But it will happen eventually so just persevere.
When the molasses-butter mix is well, mixed, you’re going to add all of the other ingredients to your mixing bowl. Once they’re all in the bowl mix it all together slowly. If you try to do it too fast you’ll probably end up getting a puff of gingery-flour in your face. You want the dough to just come together so that all the dry stuff is wet but no more. Over-mixing is another one of the deadly cookie sins.
To make the ginger snaps you’re going to have to roll them into balls. I find that this can get sticky and messy so I throw the uncovered mixing bowl in the fridge for about half an hour. In this time you’ll want to preheat your oven to 350F.
When you’re ready to bake, roll a drop of the dough between your palms into a ball about the size of a Timbit (or doughnut hole). Place the dough balls on a non-stick cookie sheet, leaving a good 2 inches around them as they’ll spread in the oven quite a bit and you don’t want them to stick together. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet & then remove to a drying rack.
You’ll want to stick the cookie dough back in the fridge to keep it cool while your waiting for the other batches to bake up.
The recipe makes about 2 dozen, give or take a few... depending on how many you "tested" in the process ;)
Reader Comments (2)
just ate three of these thanks to Terry! so good, nice and molasses(y) and not too sweet. Made my day.
aww.... that's so sweet!
there might be more treats coming your way :)