Gingersnaps

[Pontormo]

I rarely bother to bake cookies anymore, though I find myself in the mood for really good home-baked gingersnaps.

I am not in the mood for the thin Swedish kind, although a recent thread on shortening's lower trans level (when compared to butter) gave me pause since I had stopped buying products containing partially hydrogenized anything. (Never, ever will I give up butter unless I am in a Nathan Hale type of situation.)

I want something bigger and bursting with intense flavor. I have some organic gingerroot. I have a new bottle of ground ginger. I have crystalized ginger, and in the back of the fridge, there's a small, squat jar from the Ginger People with syrup left over from a ginger loaf I baked last December which I pray is still good. I would like to use as much of these as I can.

In a thread about favorite cookie dough, the focus was on a recipe for salty chocolate cookies by Pierre Herme, although Ling also praised a recipe for Chez Panisse gingersnaps, linking an entry from Chocolate & Zucchini (February 5, 2005) which provides the recipe.

More recently, I think I read another post by Ling about crystalized ginger being used to make the dough....perhaps on Most Delicious Thing....

Any further thoughts, recipes, tips, suggestions would be accepted with gratitude before I bake some time over the next few days.

Feel free to merge this thread with another on the topic if there is one. (My own search came up empty.)

Edited December 4, 2005 by Pontormo (log)

[Wendy DeBord]

Claudia Flemmings' book has a really great gingersnap recipe, but it's crisp.

[alanamoana]

the new york times magazine (special style edition) today has a recipe for gingersnaps made with bacon fat! sounds deee-lish if you ask me.

unfortunately, they are also the crispy variety.

[Pontormo]

Thanks for all the recommendations. I should have said cookies vs. snaps since snaps are by definition crisp. I will get the NYTs today if I am not too late.

Unfortunately, I am having technical problems here and lost copy when trying to preview the message, so I will recap:

Cf. Epicurious recipe for a Ginger Spice cookie that was published in Bon Appetit in March 2000 originally. I am guessing that Ling wrote helpful suggestions on 11/14/05 which I will follow; there are 150 reviews and the cookie seems to be quite popular.

If the reserved syrup from stem ginger in my fridge is still good, I will cut back on some of the molasses and brown sugar and use a couple of tablespoons. There is an awful lot of sugar in these when you take into account the crystallized ginger and sugar used to coat the balls of dough before baking.

Since ginger is up there with dark chocolate for me, any further ginger-rich alternatives are welcome here.

I also think the BA recipe might be good if the final roll in sugar is omitted. Instead, a dark chocolate glaze could be added to the tops...or filling used to sandwich them.

If I like the cookies, I may try a Pollock drizzle of melted chocolate...similar to the beautiful and delicious cardammon cookies in last year's December issue of Gourmet which had thin swirls of coffee and chocolate on the top.

[cathrynapple]

i'm pretty sure butter has saturated fat, not trans. shortening is the hydrogenated one, like margarine?

i like martha stewart's ginger snowflake recipe. (on her website)

[Ling]

Cf. Epicurious recipe for a Ginger Spice cookie that was published in Bon Appetit in March 2000 originally. I am guessing that Ling wrote helpful suggestions on 11/14/05 which I will follow; there are 150 reviews and the cookie seems to be quite popular.

←

I didn't write that review. (It does sound a bit like me though, going ahead with all those changes to the original recipe...haha. But although I never bake with shortening, I don't think I would have quite said it like the reviewer did... )

[etalanian]

There's a recipe on my web site for a soft and chewy Triple Ginger Cookie that uses crystallized ginger, fresh ginger, and dried ginger. The recipe also calls for molasses, so you can sub some of the syrup for that if you wish. (A part whole wheat variation of this recipe just won second place in a Philadelphia Magazine chef's cookie contest for the holidays.)

edit by Eileen: I tried to put the URL in this message, but I can't figure out how to do it. If you go to the site (see under my signature), click on recipes, then scroll down to the bottom of the column for cookie recipes.

Edited December 5, 2005 by etalanian (log)