Make it Snappy – Ginger Snappy!

Pop expressed disappointment when he discovered that the Bat and I returned from the grocery store, yesterday, with only one small package of cookies (and cheap ones, at that!). They weren't bottom-of-the-line dollar store imitation-food cookies, though. They were from Aldi.

Nevertheless, to a cookie junkie, it's tough to see bags devoid of classic recipes.

So, in order to satisfy the growling beast within him, I set to, in the kitchen, today.

Besides, there's a chance a few people might stop by, after the parade today (our harvest-time fair is in town, and it opens with a nice, big parade, and we live within the safe parking zone).

So, to the kitchen!

This particular recipe is a combination of three different recipes, aspects of each we like, in this house, but each one was not quite what we wanted. This one seems to suit all three of us.

Indeed, Pop was so happy, he absconded with three before I could get this shot (please note the not-quite-so-tidy rows, trying to hide the evidence).

Ginger Snaps

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) salted butter (no substitution), softened at room temperature
2 Tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 cups molasses
4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking soda
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons hot Mexican chili powder
sugar for rolling dough in

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, fresh ginger, and sugar until light and lemon-colored. Add in egg and molasses, beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger, salt, nutmeg, ground cloves, and chili powder. Add to creamed butter, mix well.*

Scoop by teaspoon and shape into balls, roll in sugar, and place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350º F for 15 minutes. Cool on rack.

Makes 90+ cookies.

*If you find the dough is too soft to work easily, place in the refrigerator for about a half hour, until it stiffens up a little. At this time, you might also want to roll portions of the dough into "sausage" rolls, about 1 1/2 inch to 2 inches in diameter, wrapped in plastic, to be put away in the freezer for later use.

Update: I've made a batch of these using gluten-free all-purpose flour (I used Bob's Red Mill). There had to be a couple of adjustments, in order to keep the crispness and not lose the heat, though. Instead of using 4 cups of the gluten-free AP flour, I used 1 1/2 cups of sweet rice flour and 2 1/2 cups AP flour, plus 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum. I also allowed the dough to chill overnight in the refrigerator, and then still used the 1 teaspoon cookie scoop to form the balls before rolling in sugar & baking on ungreased pans. Because of the change in flour/starch composition they didn't need to bake the full 15 minutes, but were done after only 12 minutes – plus about a minute of cooling down on the cookie sheet before removing them to the cooling rack. They're a little lighter in texture than the standard ginger snap, but they keep the flavor and the crispness a person wants in a snap cookie.

Update update: almost forgot to mention, I used some of the leftover sugar from having made candied ginger, in the bowl of sugar I rolled the GF cookie dough in, for that extra bit of zing. If you do this, you will not regret it.

These are my gluten-free version