Chocolate-Ginger Sugar Cookies
with a ginger glaze and candied ginger... I hope you like ginger!
Okay, folks, I know you’re already starting to plan out your cookie boxes and cookie swap offerings so I want to get this recipe out to paid subscribers ASAP. If you’re still enjoying the free lifestyle, there will be an *amazing* new cookie recipe coming hopefully early next week for you, too. In the meantime, I have excellent cookie recipes you can get right now on easygayoven.com! Check them all out here.
Updates
New on Serious Eats: We Tested 5 Cake Pans—These Are Our Two Favorites
This one was pretty hard to judge, actually, because the pans I’ve been using for years actually weren’t the best of the bunch… But I was really happy with the two winners.
New on Serious Eats: I Love Portion Scoops So Much, I Have 6 of Them
I get so many questions about these on my Reels and TikToks so I’m here to tell you all about them, which types and brands I like, what sizes I use, and for what kitchen tasks they are now irreplaceable (to me).
This Week’s Recipe
These gave me a hard time because I tried to do math. Recently, I’ve been trying to use less ingredients (and make less food I can’t eat on my own) during recipe testing rounds. With that in mind, I tried to halve the first attempt at this recipe and it was downhill from there. The first batch was great, and then suddenly they weren’t spreading at all, just puffing up. I thought it was all because of an excess of cocoa powder, or the type of cocoa powder (natural reacts differently to leaveners than Dutched or, as I also tried, black cocoa. But that couldn’t explain the degree to which these cookies had become cakey and chalky. Adding more butter made them greasier but didn’t help with spread, and fiddling with the baking soda levels didn’t help much either.
After four more rounds of failed testing, I realized it was a sugar content problem. By increasing the granulated sugar from 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup, the cookies did just what I like them to: melt down, puff up, crack all over like salt flats, then collapse down leaving a crisp exterior ring and chewy, just barely-done center. This is why you shouldn’t reduce sugar in a recipe unless you’re prepared for it to affect more than just the sweetness! Sugar is responsible for taste, but also how something bakes and the finished texture.
I call for Dutch-process cocoa powder in this recipe. I haven’t tried it with natural cocoa powder, but if I do and it goes well, I’ll let you know. Most likely you can’t interchange them for this recipe without fiddling with the leaveners. Plus, Dutch cocoa has such a deep, rich taste that stands up so well to the spicy ginger that’s all over this recipe.
And let’s talk about the ginger! It’s hidden in every crevice of these cookies because I know chocolate is such a strong flavor that can overpower anything that compete against it. It’s my worst fear that someone might say the cookie isn’t ginger-y enough. I highly doubt that will happen with this recipe. That’s why there is grated fresh ginger and dried ground ginger in the dough, the dough balls are rolled in a ground ginger-sugar mixture before baking, and then they’re drizzled in a glaze that has both fresh and dry ginger in it. And, if you’re really going full force, I chopped up candied ginger and sprinkled it on top of the glaze. If you want to make this recipe a few steps easier, or reduce the spicy flavor overall, you could omit the sanding sugar and/or the glaze. The candied ginger is optional but I also loved how it worked when just a few pieces were studded onto the dough balls before baking. (See below.)
The finishing can be done by just barely dipping the top side of the cookie in a shallow bowl of the glaze, or by piping it on with a piping bag — or you could just use a spoon. Thanks to the addition of a little melted butter, the glaze crusts over fairly quickly, making them really easy to store and transport.
Chocolate-Ginger Sugar Cookies
Makes 18 medium-size cookies
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