Triple Ginger Cookies

Baking isn’t exactly my personal recourse for existential destitution, and neither should blogging be, but, well, if ever there was a platform for public self-expression, then maybe this would be it. That said, my friend Jason is coming to visit me in March, and he asked me the other day what my favorite things to do in DC are and how many days do I think are good for getting a feel for the city. I totally drew a blank. Partial words and blurry things flickered through my head, but I, after living here for more than a year, was completely dumbfounded. “Quick, quick! Better find something I love about this place! Joey, what the hell do I love about DC?”

And now, in a really artistic and seamless segue, I will link in to my recipe for the best ginger cookies ever — it uses three different kinds of ginger — and at the end of it all, I’ll affirm how much I like DC and I’ll figure out how to make Jason like DC too. See? Seamless and artistic. Abby says that maybe part of why we’re still here is because DC is so alienating and weird, and she’s probably right that in a lot of ways, the sense of belonging is part of what propelled us from California in the first place. So maybe these moments of panic are just DC’s way of reminding me to eke out my happiness in a way that is challenging and satisfying — like through cookies.  Recipe after the jump!

These aren't ginger snaps, just straight up ginger cookies. Crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, giving, and spicy; they are super delicious.

Triple Ginger Cookies
Recipe adapted from Alton Brown

2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda
1 generous tablespoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground clove
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
¼ cup blackstrap molasses
1 large egg, room temperature
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh ginger
4 ounces crystallized ginger, finely chopped (reserve the gingery sugar)*

*Update, 11-5-11: I recently made these again but was out of crystallized ginger. I swapped in a third teaspoon (for one full tablespoon total) of freshly grated ginger to much success!

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking sheet. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cardamom, clove, and salt — set aside.

2. In a separate, large bowl, beat the brown sugar and butter on low speed until light and fluffy, about two minutes. Do not overbeat.**  Add the molasses, egg, and fresh ginger and beat on medium for one minute more. Add the crystallized ginger and using a rubber spatula, stir to combine. In three increments, add the dry ingredients to the wet, incorporating with your rubber spatula after each addition, and mixing thoroughly at the end.

3. Using a tablespoon or medium cookie scoop, scoop rounds of dough and roll them in the gingery sugar left over from your crystallized ginger. You could also use raw sugar for this, or simply sprinkle the sugar atop the cookies. Drop the rounds of dough onto a parchment-lined cookie sheets, approximately two inches apart. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 12 minutes for slightly chewy cookies or 15 minutes for more crisp cookies — mine were done at 13. Rotate the sheets front to back and top to bottom halfway through baking. Cookies are done when they're cracking along the top.

4. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to stay on the sheets for 30 seconds or so before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to ten days.

** Shame on me, I only just learned that overbeating your butter is what makes cookies spread out too much while they’re baking—exercising and over-warming the fat means it gets exhausted and runny in the oven. I learned this the hard way recently when absentmindedness turned my chocolate chip cookies into a sheet cake.