I'm Baaaack!

Yup, I took a little break. I got burned out on brownie mixes and got into a rut. From now on, there will be a new format. Mondays won't solely be dedicated to brownie mixes. Instead Monday will feature some kind of dessert... any kind of dessert. Another day during the week, I will post a recipe for something savory and there might be some other stuff thrown in there too.

I have a few things up my sleeve for this week, so stay tuned. For today's recipe, I decided to post about these amazing ginger cookies I made last week for a luncheon that I catered. My vision was to make ginger cookies and ice them with a creamy lime curd or make sandwiches with lime curd in the middle. It didn't work out that way because they were fabulous by themselves.

I used a recipe from King Arthur Flour's website (one of my fave websites for baking recipes). The first batch I baked tasted just like molasses. They were delicious, but I was hoping for more of a ginger flavor, so I ground up some crystallized ginger in the food processor until the biggest pieces were about the size of peas and I mixed that into the batter. They were much better after that. Here is the recipe. Sorry I don't have a pic. They got eaten too quick and I didn't put one aside.

Soft Ginger Molasses Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
  
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 large eggs
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons crystallized ginger, ground
  
• sugar, for coating; pearl sugar; sparkling white (coarse) sugar; or granulated sugar

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy.
2) Beat in the molasses, baking soda, salt, and spices.
3) Add the eggs, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl to make sure everything is incorporated.
4) Stir in the flour. When the flour is mixed in, gently stir in the crystallized ginger.
5) Scoop the soft dough into 1 ½" balls; a tablespoon cookie scoop works well here. Roll them in granulated sugar, coarse sugar, or pearl sugar.
6) Space the cookies on the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 ½" between them.
7) Bake them for 10 minutes. The centers will look soft and puffy; that's OK. Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool them on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.