Yummy Spicy Goodness

Once the Halloween decorations are taken down and we begin talk of turkey my food cravings change, as do my baking habits. I begin to crave warm, hearty stick to your ribs comfort foods. And I put the chocolate chip cookie recipe aside for a while. I put the brownie and cupcake making on the back burner momentarily, and I start making gingersnaps, soft and chewy they are sooo good! Come Thanksgiving and my house is filled with the wonderful smell of sweet potato pies. And lest we not forget my famous boiled oatmeal cookies, and there's always a batch of gingerbread or two in there somewhere. I got a jumpstart on the gingerbread baking this week. I don't have a tried and true recipe yet so I went to my standby, allrecipes. Overall I was pretty pleased with the recipe. It made a nice moist gingerbread with a good flavor, I think the spice amounts could benefit from being tweaked. I also prefer my gingerbread with lemon sauce, but I thoughtlessly forgot to buy lemons, and my craving wouldn't allow me to wait for the sauce so I decided to take my gingerbread straight up this time. Old Fashioned Gingerbread 1/2 cup white sugar 1/2 cup butter 1 egg 1 cup molasses 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup hot water Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9 inch square pan. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the egg, and mix in the molasses. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Blend into the creamed mixture. Stir in the hot water. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake 1 hour (I found mine was done after baking for approximately 35 minutes.) in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan before serving.

The Christmas Cookie Craze Continues

I find myself craving these cookies..I mean really craving them. I've always been a gingerbread lover. But these cookies are over the top good to me. Just the perfect amount of spices and the texture is amazing, soft and chewy. They almost seem to melt in your mouth. One thing that intrigues me about this recipe is that it contains NO butter. None. Zero. Zilch. Not a single ounce. I've never tried sub'ing butter for the oil, I figured why risk ruining a wonderful thing? Curiousity hasn't gotten the best of me with this recipe, and I'm determined that it never will. The dough is formed into balls and half is dipped in sugar so they come out having these yummy little sugary sweet crunchies on top. Unfortunately when using just plain white granulated sugar those crunchies don't show up in the finished product, so this year I purchased what Wilton calls Sparkling Sugars, which is basically just sanding sugar. I'm not sure where this recipe actually originated. It was given to me by my boss at the time, titled "Angela's Gingersnaps", Angela being his wife's name. So possibly she developed or perfected the recipe. If so she came up with one hell of a cookie and my praises go out to her. Angela's Gingersnaps 1 1/3 c. oil(I used canola) 2 eggs 2 c. sugar 1/2 c molasses 4 c. all-purpose flour \ 3 tsp. baking soda \ 2 tsp. cinnamon \ sift together 2 tsp. ginger / 1 tsp. salt / Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt, set aside. Mix together oil, eggs, sugar and molasses just until combined. Add flour mixure and stir until all ingredients are incorporated. Roll dough into small balls, about 1 tsp each. Dip 1/2 of each ball into sugar and place sugar side up on cookie sheet. Space several eachs apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen.