May the Catholic desserts be with you

Gingersnaps!!

I wish I could blog the taste right to your mouth. These cookies are buttery and spicy and salty and sweet and I ate twelve of them this morning for breakfast before I got a grip and mailed the remainder off to friends who weren't with us for dinner last night. I also brought some to the lab Christmas party. I'd made a double recipe. :) Gingersnap dough is excellent too, which is why I deliberately keep some unbaked whenever I make these.

Want to make them yourself?

Cream these four ingredients in a blender until fluffy: 

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg

Mix these dry ingredients together and then blend them with the butter/molasses mixture:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Form the dough into small balls. (Maybe 3/4 inch in diameter. Or however big you like.) Roll each ball in granulated sugar. Place balls 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheet (they spread out when they bake). Bake at 375 for about nine minutes.

Added tips-- the recipe says to bake for 12 minutes but maybe my cookies are smaller, 'cause about nine minutes is more like it. They should look slightly underdone when they come out of the oven, because they finish setting as they cool down. If you wait to take the cookies out until they look completely done-- they'll be overdone. You could always bake three or four cookies first to see how they come out...

This makes a few dozen cookies. I usually double it (make sure your mixer bowl can handle that.)

To use colored sugar, do the following:

Roll dough in small balls
Dip each ball halfway in white granulated sugar
Dip the other half in colored sugar
Bake with the colored side up.

I've learned that if the bottom of the cookie isn't coated in sugar, or if it's coated in large-crystal colored sugar, it gets a little overdone which alters the taste. It's got to be coated in fine granulated sugar.

After I'd made most of the batch it occurred to me to try two colors. I dipped each ball halfway in white sugar, then just touched it lightly in the first color of sugar, so there was a circle of color on top. Then I dipped the rest into the second color, which stuck only where the first color hadn't already stuck. I think they came out rather well! And if I can, I will so buy blue sprinkles for the Fourth of July. :)