Ginger Snap Saturday

Greetings and welcome to the third installment of my blog. There's a lot to update here so I'll just take it one day at a time.

Saturday, I decided to make ginger snaps. My sister finally returned from her long vacation and I planned to bake this upon her return. It took me about a week to finally pop these babies in the oven, but they did get the thumbs up from her. And hey, isn't that a beautiful shot of those snaps? The granulated sugar provides a nice effect and you can even see a bit of the crystallized ginger. Seems as though Chewy Ginger Snaps are somewhat of an oxymoron, but they taste good so who really cares.

I got the recipe from the Ginger People, but unfortatenly the recipe on the web and the recipe on the back of the crystallized ginger jar don't quite match up. In any case, I had to make some adjustments of my own to accomodate the ingredients I had on hand. The recipe below combines elements from the web and jar recipes. It uses a wee bit less butter than the web recipe, but I don't think it was a problem.

Chewy Ginger Snaps (slightly modified from the Ginger People recipes)
1/2 cup butter, softened
5/6 cup sugar, separated
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 egg
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3.5 ounces crystallized ginger, chopped coarsely

Instructions: Preheat oven to 375°F. Combine softened butter, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar, molasses and egg. Beat well. Stir in crystallized ginger. Sift dry ingredients together. Add to wet mixture. Mix well. Refrigerate for one hour. Form 1 inch balls. Roll in remaining 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. Place on greased cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes. Makes 3 dozen cookies.

I didn't quite have one full cup of granulated sugar as the original Ginger People recipe called for but I think the substitution works well. The crystallized ginger is already in small 1/4 inch bits so I chopped the ginger as much as I could till it became a pile of sugar and tiny ginger bits. I think I'll make these again.

I also made beet burgers for lunch but that's for another post.