Gingersnaps.

I finally ordered a copy of The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. These gingersnaps won me over; I could eat the whole pile in one go.

These aren't snappy, toothbreaking gingersnaps: They're crisp right around the edges, but soft in the middle. I baked one batch for 10 minutes and the other for 15. The second batch had much crispier edges, but still stayed chewy.

The flavors are really well balanced. I like my gingersnaps with more cloves than usual, so the 1.5 tsps in this recipe was perfect.

Gingersnaps
adapted from The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle

18 tbsp butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp powdered ginger
1.5 tsp ground cloves
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup molasses
1 cup raw sugar, or granulated sugar.

Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the light brown sugar and beat on medium-high speed until the mixture becomes fluffy and lighter in color, 6 to 8 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue to beat until they are fully incorporated and the batter looks smooth and glossy, 1 to 2 minutes.

In a dry bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the dry mixture, all at once, to the butter mixture. Using a rubber spatula, fold together for a few turns. With the mixter on slow speed, mix the dough until thoroughly combined, 1 minute.

Add the molasses and mix until incorporated. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment or silicone. Place the raw sugar in a small bowl. Pinch off 1.5 inch pieces of batter and roll into balls. Roll each ball in the sugar to coat. Arrange the cookies on the prepared sheet 2 inches apart and press your thumb in the center of each cookie to flatten it a bit. Bake until the cookies spread, crack a bit, and take on a dark golden brown color, 10-15 minutes.

Christmas Cookies from Friends and Family

(Bottom photo, clockwise from top left: Lemon Bars, Gingersnaps, Pecan Sandies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Coconut-Pineapple Bars.)

I think homemade Christmas cookies are very special. Of all the food items my family recieves during the holidays, the homemade baked goods are the most treasured. My mom and I joke that it just isn't Christmas without Marge's fruitcake and Inge's cookies.

Every year our German friend Inge gives us a bag of unique cookies packed with nuts, spices, citron, chocolate, or fruit preserves. She makes then weeks in advance and meticulously weighs each ingredient. She decorates them with egg wash, nuts, or fruit, and often lines the bottoms with rice paper wafers.

My Auntie Jeannie also makes cookies for her friends and relatives. I particularly love her lemon bars and meltingly soft gingersnaps. This year she also brought me a box of truffles and Key Lime Pears from Recchiuti Confections in San Francisco. They're really delicate and beautiful.

There was so much good food this year: mango-kalamansi truffles from Jin Patisserie, fruit cakes, several varieties of Bahlsen cookies, two bottles of Dom Perignon, See's Chocolates, vanilla-nutmeg pastry cream with fruit, pears from Harry and David...the abundance was almost overwhelming.

I recieved some nice food-related gifts as well: copies of The Cake Book by Tish Boyle and The Sweet Life by Kate Zuckerman and an awesome 12-inch professional cake decorating turn table.

It was a pleasant Christmas, and I feel very fortunate.

Molasses Spice Cookies

I strongly believe that gingersnaps and molasses cookies should be enjoyed year-round. While some people save cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves for fall and Christmas recipes, I use them for any occasion. Especially breakfast.

I've tried many kinds of spiced cookies and I definitely have favorites. So, when I tried this Cook's Illustrated recipe, I wasn't expecting much. I just wanted to use up the molasses.

As soon as the cookies came out of the oven, I knew they'd be perfect. They were beautiful: big, sugary, crinkled, and perfectly round. I've tried similar recipes that weren't nearly as consistent- the cookies spread too much, or they looked nothing like they were supposed to. Conversely, these cookies turned out perfectly every time.

I highly recommend this recipe if you like chewy molasses cookies. Don't over bake them, or they will lose their wonderfully chewy texture!

Molasses Spice Cookies
from Cook's Illustrated

Measure the molasses in a liquid measuring cup. If you find that the dough sticks to your palms as you shape the balls, moisten your hands occasionally in a bowl filled with cold water and shake off the excess. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time. If baked two sheets at a time, the cookies started on the bottom rack won’t develop the attractive cracks. The cookies should look slightly raw and underbaked when removed from the oven.

1/3 cup granulated sugar (about 2 1/2 ounces), plus 1/2 cup for dipping
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (11 1/4 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon table salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened but still cool
1/3 cup dark brown sugar (about 2 1/2 ounces)
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup molasses (about 6 ounces), light or dark

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place 1/2 cup sugar for dipping in 8- or 9-inch cake pan.

2. Whisk flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in medium bowl until thoroughly combined; set aside.

3. In standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter with brown and granulated sugars at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium-low and add yolk and vanilla; increase speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 20 seconds. Reduce speed to medium-low and add molasses; beat until fully incorporated, about 20 seconds, scraping bottom and sides of bowl once with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to lowest setting; add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping bowl down once. Give dough final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no pockets of flour remain at bottom. Dough will be soft.

4. Using tablespoon measure, scoop heaping tablespoon of dough and roll between palms into 11/2-inch ball; drop ball into cake pan with sugar and repeat to form about 4 balls. Toss balls in sugar to coat and set on prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Repeat with remaining dough. Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are browned, still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), about 11 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake.

5. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes, then use wide metal spatula to transfer cookies to wire rack; cool cookies to room temperature.

Cornmeal Currant Biscotti

I don't make biscotti much. Mediterra makes fabulous hazelnut and chocolate biscotti that are more like sables/butter cookies than traditional biscotti. I need to try a few more recipes before I know how to get the texture i'm looking for. This Alice Medrich recipe was pretty simple. I'm not sure i'd use currants next time; I think a slightly sweeter fruit would have been better with the cornmeal.

The graduation party went well last night. All of the baked goods were devoured, excepting one poundcake which i'm taking home for my parents. I have plenty of photos to share later: more gingersnaps, blondies, glazed lemon cake, and more!

Cornmeal and Fruit Biscotti
adapted from Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1 cup raisins or dried cherries, cranberries, or blueberries, or chopped dried apricots

Preheat oven to 350. Position a rack in the middle of the oven.

Combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl and mix together thoroughly with a whisk or fork. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until blended. Add the eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest, and beat until light and fluffy.

Add the flour mixture, stirring until all of the ingredients are moistened. Add the raisins, mixing with your hands if necessary. Shape the dough into a 12x2 inch log and place it on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until lightly browned and cracked on top. Cool for 5-10 minutes. Transfer the loaf carefully to a cutting board. Using a long serrated knife, cut the loaf on the diagonal into slices about 3/8 inch wide. Lay the slices, cut side down, on the cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cookies are barely beginning to brown at the edges. Set the pan on a rack. Cool the cookies completely before stacking or storing. May be stored, airtight, for at least 2 weeks.

Ginger Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

When a batch of cookies goes awry, sometimes it's the recipe's fault. Other times, it's your fault. Well- at least your equipment's fault.

Once, I took a batch of these gingersnaps to my friend's office the same day one of his coworkers did. Even though we used the same recipe, our cookies looked and tasted nothing alike. It was clear we approached things very differently; he mentioned spending time in Whole Foods searching for "packed brown sugar."

There are so many variables involved in cookie baking: technique, baking time, temperature, equipment, ingredients, cooling methods...to understand them, you must bake lots of cookies.

I made a big bowl of Ginger Oatmeal Raisin Cookie dough and experimented with each dozen I baked. I baked some batches for 10 minutes, and others for 12-16. I used different types of cookie sheets. I left some cookies on the sheet to cool and moved others to racks individually. I flattened the cookies to different thicknesses. I put little squares of candied ginger on some and left others plain. I fiddled with the oven temperature and oven rack position.

Eventually, I found my favorite combination: one inch balls of dough, flattened and garnished with ginger, baked on a parchment-lined half-sheet pan in the upper middle rack of my oven for 10 minutes at 325 F and an extra 2-3 minutes at 330 F, and cooled completely on the cookie sheet.

There's no guarantee this method will work for you. You probably have a different oven, different cookie sheets, different weather, and a different taste in cookies. I like mine crunchy at the edges, chewy in the middle, nicely golden, and well spiced.

I like this recipe. The cayenne pepper and ginger add a nice bite to an otherwise traditional, satisfying oatmeal raisin cookie.

Ginger Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
adapted from Pichet Ong's The Sweet Spot
1 1/2 cups (223g) all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup (226g) unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch cubes and chilled
2/3 cup (114g) packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (114g) sugar
2 tbsp candied ginger, finely chopped, plus more for garnish if desired
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
2 large eggs
1 tbsp whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (170g) old fashioned rolled oats
1 1/4 cups (170g) raisins, preferably golden

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.

2. Put the butter, both sugars, the ginger, cinnamon, salt, and cayenne, into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. With the machine running, add the eggs one at a time, then add the milk and vanilla. As soon as the liquids are incorporated, stop the mixer and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.

3. Turn the mixer speed to low and add half the flour mixture. When it is incorporated, add the remaining flour and mix until no traces of flour remain. Stir in the oats and raisins. If you have time, cover the dough and let chill for at least 2 hours, or up to 3 days, before baking.

4. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

5. Scoop the cookie dough into 1 inch balls and put 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Use your palm to slightly flatten each ball, then sprinkle the tops with chopped candied ginger, if desired.

6. Bake the cookies until lightly golden brown, about 10 minutes*. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely. The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

*I pulled one batch of cookies at exactly 10 minutes and they were way under-baked. My baking time also varied depending on the type of cookie sheet I used. Wait until the cookies are no longer wet/shiny on top. They should be just golden at the edges. Bake them longer for a crispier cookie.