Soft Ginger Cookies

I posted the recipe for this to my main journal back in 2001. Have been making it for ages, so I suppose it’s about time I actually took pictures of these guys. A perennial favorite that even non-fans of ginger end up liking. And for those of us who *do* like ginger… well, it’s easy enough to pile on extra when making the dough

This recipe was adapted from the AR “Big Soft Ginger Cookies” recipe which probably has more fans than most major recording artists. It’s one of the oldest recipes there and has more than 1500 reviews, the majority of them exceedingly positive. They live up to the name, too, unlike many cookies which harden after a few days. These will stay soft for over two weeks in a ziploc bag and still taste great — something I’ve used to great advantage when mailing out holiday care packages to friends in different countries. I’ve made quite a few little tweaks to the original recipe over the years, so my edited version follows.

The lineup. We’ve got all-purpose flour, ground ginger, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, salt, unsalted butter, white sugar, a large egg, water and some nice orange blossom honey.

A couple notes right off the bat — really, what sort of cookie recipe calls for margarine instead of butter? This one did, by the way, but let’s just overlook that as a brain hiccup. Ick. I’m a proud butter-user when it comes to my baking, hands down.

Secondly, refer back to my previous mini-rant about molasses. I still dislike the smelly black gunk and won’t use it unless it’s absolutely crucial to a recipe. And even then, I will tend to just avoid the recipe altogether. Hence, the honey. I’ve used clover honey, orange blossom honey, raw wild honey, eucalyptus honey… just about any honey will be awesome and so much tastier than molasses. Ugh, I shudder at even the mention.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

It says to start out by creaming together 3/4 cup (one and a half sticks) of softened butter or margarine with 1 cup of sugar, until light and fluffy. I did this the first few times, letting the butter sit out to soften, but after a while I started just melting it over the stove on low because it was faster. You can mix it into the sugar that way, I didn’t actually notice much of a difference as long as I didn’t heat the butter to sizzling or anything. By the time you finish making the dough, it will usually have cooled off enough to make the dough perfectly pliable for the baking sheet. People have complained that it was too crumbly for them to make the proper cookie balls, and then their having to smash the things flat before baking. I’ve never had that problem since I started using melty butter. While creaming is supposed to induce more fluffiness prior to baking, I must say that these particular cookies flatten very fast when taken out, regardless of whether I creamed the butter or not. It’s part of why they remain so chewy.

For those that still feel the need to cream out of paranoia, there is a faster way to get it done than waiting for the butter to reach room temperature. I do this when I’m dealing with recipes that actually do need a bit of lift to them. Take your refrigerated hard butter and cut it into 1/2 inch slices. Toss them into a mixing bowl along with the sugar, and set the bottom of that bowl into a larger bowl of simmering water. Beat that until the butter starts to soften, then transfer the mixing bowl into a larger bowl of cold water to cool off while you continue beating. A few minutes by hand should get you the light and fluffy consistency you’re looking for.

Beat in 1 tablespoon of water and 1/3 cup of honey. If you are using molasses, use only 1/4 cup. You can also substitute orange juice for the water to give the cookies an extra zing.

Mix in 2 teaspoons of ground ginger, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves and 1/4 teaspoon salt. I use a little more ginger and cinnamon, because those are my two favorite baking spices.

Beat in 1 large egg thoroughly.

Gradually mix in 2 and 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour.

In a smaller bowl, scoop out a few tablespoons of white sugar to use for coating. Take walnut-sized balls of cookie dough and roll them around in the sugar to cover them thoroughly.

Place the cookies 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. I line mine with parchment paper to make it easier to slide them off for faster reloading of cookie sheets Considering I made about 45 cookies from this batch of dough, you’ll be doing a bit of baking rotation unless your oven is industrial-sized. Flatten the cookie balls slightly if they’re looking domed.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. I slide the entire parchment paper of cookies off the baking sheet and onto the table afterwards to let them cool on their own. Store in an airtight container or ziploc bag.

As you can see from the images I have here of three different batches of cookies from the same dough, placement of cookies at different levels of the oven can result in different looking cookies. The ones two pictures above have little cracks and are darker-looking because they were sitting on the top rack and getting lots of heat. The ones directly above this paragraph were in the middle, the ones below this paragraph, in the bottom rack. So if you want smooth-looking cookies, go for the middle or bottom racks. It’s all just looks, though — they were all very soft, flat and tasty in the end