This week's SMS was chosen by Gloria of The Ginger Snap Girl, who not too surprisingly went with gingersnaps! We had a super busy weekend, but I found a few minutes to whip these up in between running errands. I halved the recipe and still wound up with about 2 dozen cookies. As I baked them, I was transported back about 6 months to the time when I was baking with molasses and spices like ginger, cinnamon and allspice a lot more often! The house smelled wonderful as always, I love these scents which remind me of fall/winter and the holidays.
The recipe calls for refrigerating the dough for the cookies for an hour before portioning and baking them. I chilled mine for at least that long then spaced them on the cookie sheet as directed and popped them in the oven. When I turned on the light to check on them about 2/3 of the way thru the baking time, I was not thrilled to discover they'd spread and all baked together into one giant, misshapen cookie. For the next batch, I put fewer cookies on the baking sheet and had better luck, though they still spread quite a bit, so I'm guessing if the book had included a photo for this recipe we'd have seen thin cookies. While I prefer thicker cookies, I still really enjoyed these. They were soft and chewy, and the molasses flavor wasn't too overpowering. I skipped the white pepper (I've tried it before in other recipes and just prefer my desserts to be pepper-less). These don't take over the top spot from my go-to ginger cookies, but a good one for sure!
Thanks to Gloria for hosting this week! You can find the recipe for the gingersnaps on her blog or on pages 64-65 of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book.
