These are spicy, gingery, crunchy, chewy gingersnaps. They’re deeply delicious cookies that will leave a pleasant tingle in your mouth. They go GREAT with black coffee and even better with a cappuccino. They’re perfect for Christmas, but honestly, you could have them any time of year.

Ingredients for 3 dozen cookies:

For the cookie dough:

Choose the ingredients to the left for a thicker, subtly prettier cookie that has wonderful chewy/crunchy attributes. Choose the ingredients on the right for a thinner cookie with perfectly balanced layers of crunchy and chewy. Choose all right-side ingredients, or all left-side ingredients; don’t mix and match these.^[a]

5 oz. (¾ cup, or 12 Tbs) vegetable shortening | 6 oz. (¾ cup, or 1½ sticks) butter,^[b,c] at room temperature
6 oz. (1⅓ cups) cake flour | 4.5 oz. (1 cup) cake flour
5.5 oz. (1 cup) bread flour | 6.875 oz. (1¼ cups) bread flour^[d]
3.5 oz. (⅓ cup) molasses | 3 oz. (¼ cup) molasses

You now have one more choice to make, and you can go either way regardless of the choices you’ve already made:

8.75 oz. (1 cup) granulated sugar | 8.5 oz. (1 cup) dark brown sugar

About the following ingredients, you have no choice:

1.75 oz. (1 large) egg^[e]
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves

And now you have some options which you can freely add or leave out, regardless of the choices you’ve already made. I strongly recommend both.

2.75 oz. (about ½ cup) crystallized ginger, diced to about pea-sized pieces
¼ tsp coarsely-ground black pepper

For the cookie coating:

1.75 oz. (¼ cup) granulated sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon, optional

How To Do It:

1. Cream the shortening/butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy,^[f] from 1¼ to 3 minutes, ramping up to speed 6 (of 10). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
2. Beat in the egg, until homogenous, about 15 seconds on speed 4. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
3. Beat in the molasses, about 15 seconds on speed 4. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
4. (Stir in the crystallized ginger until even distributed, 10 second at lowest speed.)  
5. Add the flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, (pepper) and cloves, stirring to make a smooth, fairly stiff dough, about 20 seconds on lowest speed.
6. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic, and chill it for an hour or up to a week.
7. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with Silpats.
8. To make the coating, place sugar (and cinnamon) in a shallow pan or dish (and stir).
9. Measure out ⅞ oz. of dough (about 1½ Tbs, creating a 1″ ball), roll it into a ball, and drop it into the sugar. Roll it in the sugar to coat, then transfer to a plate. Repeat until you’ve created a dozen balls. Transfer them to a baking sheet, leaving 2″ between them, and bake for 12 minutes. (The plate isn’t necessary at first, but eventually it will help you steer clear of placing the balls on hot baking sheets.) Re-wrap the remaining dough and place it in the freezer. About 6 minutes into the bake, begin forming the next dozen balls.
10. Remove the cookies from the oven, cool 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Store tightly wrapped, at room temperature.

Notes:

1. Even thought I said you have to stick to the right-side ingredients or the left-side ingredients, the fact is that you can use a mixture of shortening and butter. I’m sure it will work, but I can’t guarantee that you won’t need to make adjustments to the other ingredients.
2. Try European butter.
3. Vegetable shortening will lean the cookie toward the crispy side. Another way to make a crisper cookie would be to divide this dough into five dozen cookies instead of three, and reduce the baking time to 11 minutes.
4. Substitute same-volume measurements of AP flour for the cake and bread flours.
5. The standard “large” egg weighs 1.75 oz. outside the shell. In my experience, many eggs don’t hit this mark on the nose. It’s not usually a big deal, though. However, if the egg (outside of the shell) weighs 2 oz. or more, what you have on your hands is actually an “extra large” egg. In a sense, woo-hoo, you got something for nothing if you got it from a carton of “large” eggs. On the other hand, this is enough extra egg to throw off your bake. Whip the white and yolk together with a fork, and then measure out 1.75 oz.-worth. If the eggs winds up weighing 1.5 oz. or less, crack another egg to get what you need.
6. If you’ve chosen shortening and white sugar, they’re not going to get any lighter in color as you cream them together, but the mixture will get fluffy to the point that it looks like frosting. If you chosen butter and/or brown sugar, you should wind up with a decidedly lighter color as you cream it.

In researching this recipe, I tested one from King Arthur, one from That Skinny Chick Can Bake, and one from Martha Stewart. Then I did some experimentation of my own. The intention of the King Arthur recipe is, I believe, to produce the kind of bite-sized, crunchy gingersnaps that you buy in bags, even though it does have options that allow for chewier cookies. I found it to be spot-on … a wonderful recipe. I found the flavor profile of the Skinny Chick cookie to be strongly attractive. They also have an alluring, micro-thin, crunchy exterior with a beautifully chewy interior. Fantastic recipe. They’re milder than I’d prefer, but don’t take that as a criticism; it’s merely a reflection of my preferences. The Marth Stewart recipe produced a dough that was sticky and harder to work with than the others, and I’m so sorry to say that her recipe produced sorely disappointing cookies. They spread way too much, had no crackle, were visually unappealing, and had little flavor. Her recipe calls for fresh, grated ginger; as enticing as that sounds, it was a waste of time. The cookies were bland. To her credit, the cookies did have a nice caramelization (due probably to the Demerara sugar) and a stiff-but-bendy, ultra-chewy texture. If only they had more flavor, and didn’t look like disastrous mistakes!  There was a time when Martha was flawless.

Spicy, Crunchy, Chewy Gingersnaps

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Thank you, Kesor. Thanks, Joe Pastry. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything.

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