Ginger Molasses Cookies Experiment

During my graham cracker experiment, it occurred to me that said recipe would work pretty well for ginger bread as well. Instead of going for ginger bread men and the harder type of ginger cookie, I decided to start with a more classic looking soft cookie, as I really don't have much experience with ginger molasses cookies. I tried to imitate a classic cookie recipe, using ground ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and molasses for flavor.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons yogurt
• 1 1/3 cup rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup molasses
• white sugar for sprinkling (optional)
  

-I preheated the oven to 375 degrees F and greased a cookie sheet.

-I creamed the butter with the brown sugar, then added the egg and mixed well.

-I added the remaining ingredients (except for about 1/6 cup of rice flour and 1/4 teaspoon of salt) and mixed. The resulting mixture was a little too wet and a little too bland. I added the remaining flour and salt and this seemed to help. The dough was still quite sticky and probably could have used some corn starch (Which goes a long way to help dry out sticky dough without making it taste too heavy) but I was low and I wanted to stick to rice flour if possible.

-I scooped the dough out by the tablespoon, rounded it into balls with my hands, and pressed the balls to 1/4 inch thickness in the pan. It made 26 cookies. For about half the cookies, I sprinkled a little white sugar on top.

-Baked for 9-10 minutes, until they were just barely browning on the edges and transferred immediately to be cooled.


Results: As you can see, the appearance was very like the classic ginger cookie (though the first picture, without the flash captured the pretty brown color and the cracked top better. They weren't quite so orange as in the picture above) and while it may seem silly to be grateful for a round, domed cookie, it is surprisingly easy to come up with cookies that look like misshapen lumps rather than cookies. These looked very much like cookies.

The thing that struck me when I first tasted one of these cookies was that they didn't taste very much like ginger cookies, or like much of anything. They were only slightly sweet and slightly spicy, which was rather disappointing. The ones with a bit of sugar tasted a bit better because the sugar added some of the sweetness that was missing. Secondly, two types of cookies came out of the oven: The ones that were removed from the hot pan first were extremely fragile while still warm and the ones that were allowed to sit on the pan and bake just slightly longer had a little bit of a crunchiness on the outside and retained their structure better while still warm. I found the second kind more pleasant. However, once the cookies had cooled completely, things switched. The cookies that had been cooked slightly longer were a little too chewy, as if they were stale, and tasted rather dry. The first set of cookies were now pleasantly soft (no longer falling apart) and retained more of their moisture.

Notes: The main problem with the cookies seemed to be the flavor. I figure this could be easily fixed by increasing the amount of spices used, and certainly the amount of sugar. Normally, 1/2 cup of sugar is used in my cookie recipes, but I was going off of my graham cracker recipe, which I specifically lowered the sugar amount for in order to get it closer to a cracker.

For texture, striking a balance with more corn starch to keep the dough dry and light and yogurt to keep the texture moist would be the most beneficial I think, although i am still wondering if there is a way to use only rice flour in recipes such as these which require an additional wet ingredient such as molasses. I think additional xanthan gum may also be required, because, again, a great deal more xanthan gum is typically used in my cookie recipes than I used here, due to using my graham cracker recipe as a guide. I also think that with additional xanthan gum, it would be safe to remove these cookies from the oven a little earlier, say 8 minutes, as the softer texture seemed the better one overall.

Despite the fact that these cookies weren't quite what I was hoping for, I ate them all in a matter of three days. I guess that's what happens when you're alone in a house with a fire, a dog, a good book, and a plate of cookies!

(This recipe was purely of my own invention.)