And the Holiday Baking Begins

We freely admit that we are suckers for flattery. When we asked our Thanksgiving host up in San Francisco what we could bring, we had visions of dry Alinea caramel, some amazing wine, some delicate sugar cookies shaped like autumn leaves and sprinkled with orange and yellow sugar.

“You make the best ginger snaps in the world,” she said. “Make that. Skip the pies and everything else, but make gingersnaps.”

Well, sure! Of course we will. And while we’re at it, we volunteered to make a batch for a fifth grade school party as well. 

So this morning, we pulled out the butter, a bunch of mixing bowls, a flour sifter and got moving. We whipped up some pie crusts, used up some icky bananas for banana bread and then made the gingersnap dough.

This is a recipe we’ve been using since we first found it in the early 1980s in, of all places, Seventeen magazine. They used to have a cookie contest every year, which we assume (based on a quick Google search) that they’ve long since abandoned. Perhaps young teen girls no longer bake, but rather spend all their free time LOL’ing online, or playing Guitar Hero.

In any case, we were intrigued back then by the description of the soft, chewy gingersnap cookies that looked amazingly like the hard nasty disks that you buy in the box. Imagine our surprise when the cookies turned out perfectly. They looked great, they tasted great, and they’ve been our go-to cookie from October through January ever since.

Here’s the recipe:

3/4 cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1 egg

2 1/4 cups sifted flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Cream first 4 ingredients together until fluffy. Sift dry ingredients together; stir into molasses mixture. Chill dough for an hour. Preheat oven to 375 F. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll balls in graunluated sugar, then place 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet (we use parchment instead). Bake for 9 minutes. Cool slightly on cokie sheet, then remove to wire racks and let cool completely.

Yield: 4 dozen cookies.

We’ll post a photo soon; at the moment things are chilling in the fridge.

It’s feeling very holiday-ish, though, around here. It starts with gingersnaps, then we’ll move onto sugar cookies, almond cookies, cookie press cookies, cinnamon and peppermint, ooh la la…

So tell us. What are your favorite holiday cookies?