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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Gingersnaps!

The other day, I posted a recipe for Giant Ginger Cookies. The day that I made them, I only baked enough of the dough to make 6 of the 25 cookies the recipe makes. Since then, I have fiddled with the remaining dough. Although I very much enjoyed the cookies as I posted them, I have since decided that I really am more of a crispy ginger cookie kind of gal. I'm all about the snap! I found that as I was eating those giant cookies, the part I was enjoying the most was the slightly crispy outside.

So, I went to work. I baked a few here, a few there, using various sized scoops. This is one of the reasons I love cookie dough: make the dough one day and bake it a few cookies at a time as you want them. I often freeze the preformed dough balls. In this case, I just put it in the fridge; I knew I'd be coming back to it soon.

My favorite iteration, which I felt I had to share, was a snappy, super gingery cookie. If you like Trader Joe's gingersnaps, you'll absolutely adore these. I cut up a bunch of crystallized ginger and put it in the dough. I made no measurements. It's all about a gut feeling here. Go as crazy as you like. Well, almost. You do want more dough than add-ins.

I ended up liking them fairly small and thin. I used my #100 disher which holds about 2 tsp of dough. I rolled them in sugar and then baked them. I used sanding sugar which is fairly coarse grained, but regular sugar works fine too. Some of them I pressed flat before baking. I liked them both ways. The ones that I didn't flatten got a pretty crackled surface, but the ones I pressed had more snap to them. You can see the difference in them below. I still baked them at 350 degrees F and they took about 20 minutes to bake. I think I need another cookie!

2 comments:

  1. I made these yesterday, and I know I shouldn't, but I ate one third of the dough before baking. Yum! I like the look of the cookies when I don't flatten them. Then I ate one third of the cookies after they were baked - and I had one for breakfast this morning. BAAAAAD!

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  2. Don't feel bad... I just ate 10 of them while sitting here writing my most recent post. And I had five for lunch... and two for breakfast... I've basically been eating them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner since I made them. I'm not sure whether to be grateful or sad that there are only 6 left.

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