Ginger Crinkles

ginger crinkle cookies

Looking back through my mother’s cookbooks, I can find at least three dog-eared Ginger Cookie recipes plus one for Gingerbread Cake, oh and there’s a Spice Cake recipe as well. I distinctly recall each of these desserts and I remember loving them all. So this year, as winter set in and I began craving the homey, holiday tastes of cinnamon and nutmeg and molasses, I stirred up some childhood memories. The recipe below became my kids’ favorite — soft and chewy and oh-so flavorful. These cookies are nothing like the rolled-out gingerbread dough meant for creating icing-topped houses. Reach for local sorghum syrup if you can find it. (Tennessee is a top sorghum syrup producer.) Sorghum is a grain that’s harvested and then boiled down to make a sweet syrup, high in potassium, that does not include additives or preservatives. Molasses is a sugar cane product that’s sometimes processed using sulfur dioxide. Its most healthful iteration, blackstrap molasses, is not as sweet-tasting as sorghum syrup.

Makes 6 to 8 dozen

Ingredients

  • 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
  • 4 tsp. baking soda
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 tsp. ground cloves
  • 2 tsp. ground ginger
  • 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
  • 2 cups packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup molasses
  • Granulated sugar

Instructions

  1. Mix together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
  2. Mix butter, brown sugar and eggs, either with a mixer or by hand, until very light and fluffy. Stir in sorghum or molasses, then flour mixture.
  3. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
  4. Preheat oven to 375ºF. Shape dough into walnut-sized balls. Roll each ball in a bowl of granulated sugar.
  5. Place balls, evenly spaced, on cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes. Then let sit on the hot cookie sheets for 5 more minutes before removing to cooling racks. These are best if not over-baked.