Joe Froggers

I realized the other day that despite the fact that spice cookies are among Chris' favorite kinds of cookies, I don't actually make them that often, probably because they don't do all that much for me. I actually made these cookies weeks ago as part of a care package that never got sent out. One thing I did discover though was that after sitting in a plastic bag for 2 weeks, these cookies were just as good as they day I made them -- soft and chewy and spicy.

These are incredibly soft cookies with a great molasses and ginger flavor and when I was looking for another recipe for spice cookies in my King Arthur Flour book I saw a variation of these recipe calling for dates and crystallized ginger. Knowing how much Chris liked the original recipe and how much he likes dates it was a no-brainer to give the new version a try.

The first cookies were soft and spicy, and the second set are just a little sweeter from the dates and a little spicier from the crystallized ginger. Either cookie is a winner and one version of these will likely make it into my Christmas cookie boxes -- well, if I manage to do Christmas cookies this year. The jury is still out on that one, but I suppose I better figure that one out in the next couple of weeks.



Joe Froggers:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
3 tbsp dark rum

For the extra spicy version add:
1/4 cup diced crystalized ginger
3/4 cup chopped dates

Preheat oven to 375. To make regular Joe Froggers mix the first 7 ingredients in a medium size bowl. To make the extra spicy ones, put the first 7 ingredients in a food processor along with the dates and ginger and pulse until everything is finely ground, then pour into a medium bowl.

In a medium saucepan melt the butter, brown sugar, molasses and rum together. Once it's melted pour it into the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Put the bowl in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or until chilled enough to scoop easily. Portion tablespoonful's of dough onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or silpats and bake 11-12 minutes.

Snickerdoodles -- Walter

12 hours shifts are making baking a whole lot more difficult, but they haven't stopped me yet. The other day when I came home from a very long day, I just wanted to eat my dinner, share a beer with Chris and veg on the couch for an hour or two before I fell into bed. That was my plan anyway.

However, when I finally made it home I discovered that one of my neighbors was outside working on the lawn. The front lawns are adjacent and quite small so it's not that big of a deal to mow both sides if you're mowing anyway -- but she went further. She had used a shovel and her hands to edge the entire shared front section, which is quite a feat considering it's never been done in the 7 years I've lived here. I thanked her profusely of course (as had Chris earlier) and she said that she had been watching Oprah and Oprah had encouraged everyone to do something nice for their neighbor so she mowed for both of us and when she noticed how raggedy the front edge was she edged it too.

The whole thing was so nice it inspired me to bake the snickerdoodle dough I had sitting in the fridge, so that I could give her some cookies. I may not be much for lawn work, but I can bake a mean batch of cookies. :)

There's not much to say about snickerdoodles other than yum. Cracky, crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle. Mine baked longer than the 10 minutes the Caroel Walter's book called for, but that was really it. Soft, crispy, perfect cinnamon sugary cookies fresh from the oven -- you can't get much better than that.

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tarta
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

Combine the butter and vegetable shortening in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment until combined and soft. Add the sugar and mix for a couple more minutes. Add the eggs one a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients in two additions and mix on low just until combined. Scrape the dough into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for 6-8 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Fill a small bowl with combination of 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp. ground cinnamon. Take the dough out of the refrigerator. Using your hands, take a piece of dough and roll in your hands to form an approximately 1-inch ball. Roll the ball in the cinnamon-sugar mixture until thoroughly coated and place on the baking sheet. Place the balls about 3 inches apart on the sheets. It is also a good idea to stagger the rows so the cookies have the most room to spread out.

Bake for about 10 minutes or until they have flattened out and browned slightly, and the tops have cracked. Rotate the sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking. Remove the cookies from the oven and place sheets on cooling racks for several minutes until they have firmed up, then transfer cookies directly to the racks to finish cooling.

Crackly Cinnamon Wafers

I had this cookie recipe on my mind the other day because of their similarity to snickerdoodles. I have a coworker who loves snickerdoodles, and I suppose I could have just made those, but I wanted to try these first and see how they turned out.

I'm pretty sure my cookies were much thicker than they were supposed to be. The picture in the Carole Walter's book shows a wafer-thin cookie that looks crisp... mine were thicker and softer. I didn't mind the softer consistency, but I do sort of wish I had smushed them a bit flatter before I baked them because part of what I was curious about with the cookies was the texture. There is no baking powder or baking soda to make them poof, so really the only fault was mine in not being more diligent about flattening them out.

The flavor was good with lots of cinnamon, but I still like snickerdoodles better. If you really like cinnamon though, these cookies are for you. The cinnamon flavor is much more pronounced in these than in snickerdoodles, or most other cookies I have tried.



Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour, spooned in and leveled
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly firm
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, separated
3 -4 tbsp sparkling white sugar for garnish

Mix the flour and cinnamon and set aside.

Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on medium-low speed, mix the butter until smooth. Add the granulated sugar in a steady stream and beat until combined. Add the egg yolk and mix for 1 minute longer, scraping down the side of the bowl as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low, then add the dry ingredients in three additions, mixing just until blended after each addition. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350. Line cookie sheets with silpats or parchment paper.

Roll dough into 3/4 inch balls and place on prepared cookie sheets, about 2 1/2 inches apart. Using the bottom of a flat-bottomed glass that has been covered in plastic wrap and dipped in flour, flatten the dough balls into 2 1/2 inch discs.

In a shallow dish, lightly beat the egg white with 2 tsps of cold water and brush the top of each cookie with egg wash. Sprinkle each cookie with sparkling sugar. Bake for 10 to 11 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Rotate the pans halfway through baking. Let stand for 1 minute after removing from the oven, then loosen with a thin metal spatula.

Molasses Spice Cookies

I'm not a huge fan of spice cookies, much less crunchy spice cookies. When I have to choose a cookie recipe I tend to go for something involving chocolate and/or oatmeal that bakes up soft and chewy with nuts sprinkled throughout to give me the crunch I want. So when I started flipping through my new cookie book (Carole Walter's Great Cookies) this recipe would not have been my first choice... hell, it probably wouldn't have made my top 50 for the book -- but I let Chris choose and he loves crispy, crunchy spice cookies.

These cookies bake up thin and crunchy/chewy. They aren't rock hard like some spice cookies get, but they will probably harden up as time passes (if they last that long of course.) Instead they have a very appealing crispy crust with a thin layer of soft cookie in the middle. Part of the crispy crust comes from the sugar that the dough was rolled in before baking, but I think the other part comes from the batter which uses melted butter instead of soft butter. In regular cookie recipes the butter is creamed with the sugar and while you don't beat a lot of air into the butter and eggs -- you still incorporate some. In this variation, the sugar is stirred into the melted butter and no air is involved -- which partly results in the flat cookie, but also gives it a really nice texture.

I'm still not a spice cookie lover, but this has certainly been one of my favorite variations on the theme and now I can see some of their appeal.



Ingredients:
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups all purpose flour, spooned in and leveled
2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 cups sugar, divided
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 large egg

To make the dough:
Melt the butter in a 3-quart, heavy saucepan over low heat. (This cookie is mixed by hand in the pot) Cool to tepid.

Strain together three times the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, salt and cloves. Set aside.

Using a wooden spoon stir 1 1/2 cups of the sugar, the molasses and egg into the butter, mixing until smooth. Add the dry ingredients, one-half at a time, and blend well. Cover with wax paper and chill for 30 to 45 minutes, until firm.

To bake the cookies:
Preheat oven to 375 and lightly grease baking sheets (or use silpats or parchment paper.)

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls between the palm of your hands or using a cookie scoop. Place the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a low dish and roll the balls of dough in the sugar. Place the balls 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets.

Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the tops begin to crack. Remove from the oven and let stand 2 to 3 minutes. Losses with a thin metal spatula and transfer to cooling racks.

Storage: Store in an airtight container, layered between strips of wax paper, for up to 3 weeks. These cookies may be frozen.

Gingersnaps with Crystallized Ginger

These cookies call for the strangest ingredient that I have seen yet for a cookie recipe: balsamic vinegar. They also call for black pepper and host of other spices... but balsamic vinegar? I nearly baulked at that ingredient, and the only thing that made me add it in the end was that the baking bites lady made of point of saying in her description that the balance of spices was perfect and that they should be made as written. Therefore, I added the balsamic vinegar. My palate isn't refined enough to detect the vinegar in the finished product, but who knows, maybe they taste significantly different without it in there.

I was excited about this recipe because it calls for crystallized ginger which is an ingredient I like to use. It offers a nice peppery contrast to sweet baked goods and is often a pleasant surprise of a flavor. It also helps that Chris really likes gingersnaps. :)

Either way, these are a great cookie. They look fairly puffy -- quite different from the flat gingersnap cookies I made from the Dorie Greenspan book, but they are crisp (they will probably be less crisp in a day or two -- but they start out nice and crisp) and the spice balance is quite nice. Baking Bites got this recipe from Real Simple, which I guess is a magazine and a website...? I got the recipe from her though, so I'll give her credit for it.

Ingredients:

4 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup butter, at room temp
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, plus more for coating
2 large eggs
1/2 cup molasses
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 375.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and black pepper.

In another large bowl, cream together butte, and sugar. Add the eggs one by one, followed by molasses, balsamic vinegar and vanilla. Either by hand, or with the mixer on low speed, gradually stir in all the flour mix, adding the minced ginger with the last addition. Stir until all the flour is combined.

Form dough into 1 1/2 inch balls, roll in extra sugar and place on baking sheet. Press cookies to flatten slightly and bake for 10-12 minutes, until browned around the edges.

Snickerdoodles

I was trolling through the baking bites website again (I really have to stop that soon -- too many temptations!) and I found this recipe. I haven't had a snickerdoodle in a very long time, and I have never made them before. The cookies dough was a little dry, so I had some problems getting them to form into balls, but luckily there was no need to be particularly gentle with the dough. Baking Bites credits this recipe to allrecipes and commented that this recipe had over 1,000 positive reviews which sounded promising to her and equally good to me. She also called snickerdoodles the "single least offensive cookie that there is" which is pretty amusing. But I see her point, who doesn't like a cinnamon sugar cookie that isn't horribly sweet?

The cookies were a little crisper than I like, but I like very soft cookies. I baked the first set for 8 minutes, but actually baked the next two batches for only 7 minutes. They weren't overdone at 8 minutes, just crisper than I liked, although I suppose other people prefer crisp cookies. Baking bites comments that she prefers her cookies crisp and so bakes her on the high end of the range (10 minutes.) To each their own...

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tarter
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, soft
1/2 cup shortening (I used butter-flavored), soft
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (I used silmats)

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl cream together butter and shortening, gradually adding the sugar until mixture is fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract. Gradually mix in the flour at low speed until dough is formed.

In a small bowl combine cinnamon and sugar. Roll 1-inch balls of dough in the mixture and place on baking sheet. Cookies will spread, so leave about 2 inches between cookies. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set.

Remove to a wire cooling rack immediately. Store in an airtight container when cool.