seasonal cooking pt. deux

well, okay, that's a bit of a misnomer. Baking and cooking are technically two different things. This is a recipe for some chewy ginger cookies that seem nice and appropriate for the holiday season.

There are three different "types" of ginger in this recipe, which, paired with the dark brown sugar, molasses, and other spices give these little cookies a lot more depth than they look like they'd have. They're delicious, trust me. The cookies that this recipe is for are vegan, but feel free to substitute dairy products if that's what you'd like (although the nice thing about these is that they don't have "bad" cholesterol).

ingredients (use organic/fair trade/sustainable wherever possible!):

2 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1/2 teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg
a few pinches of kosher salt (kosher does make a difference, promise)
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper (I know, weird, just trust me)
3/4 cup of firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup of canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons of Ener-G egg replacer
2 tablespoons of filtered water
1/2 cup of blackstrap molasses
2 teaspoons of peeled, freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup finely chopped crystallised ginger
about 1/2 cup of raw (turbinado) sugar

directions:

"prep" all of the ingredients: grate the nutmeg, peel and grate the fresh ginger, chop the crystallised ginger, and mix the water with the egg replacer powder (again, this is the "vegan version") until it's smooth and creamy.

(the crystallised ginger, all nicely chopped by my lovely assistant James Curry)

after all of that is taken care of, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

now, mix the flour, ground ginger, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and pepper in a large bowl.

in a separate bowl, mix the canola oil and brown sugar until it's all nice and combined. Add the egg replacer mixture, vanilla, grated ginger and molasses to the wet mixture. Again, make it all nice and smooth.

add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until juuuuust combined. Don't overmix! It supposedly does bad things! Now, add the crystallised ginger and mix it around. It should be pretty thick, gooey, and dark.

the crystallised stuff gets you pretty sticky, as my lovely assistant found out.

all right, now you've got to take out a couple baking trays and get ready for the fun part. Put the turbinado sugar into a shallow bowl. Take little glops of the dough about 1 tablespoon in volume. Roll it gently in the sugar and place on the baking tray.

Do that until it's all used up.

Space them about 1 1/2 inches apart on the trays, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. You can tell when they're done if the edges are a bit firm and the centers are cracked.

let 'em cool for about five minutes until you transfer them to another plate or rack.

 

mae thought the dough was pretty tasty, at least.

 

don't worry, I sanitised afterwards.

well, that's it! happy ginger-ing!