Two years ago when I made the Sweet Potato Tart with Gingersnap Crust and Heavenly Meringue from Baked Occasions for Thanksgiving, I declared that I would always use Tish Boyle's Gingersnap recipe from The Good Cookie to make the crust for the tart. But times change, and as I always say -- there are so many recipes, but so little time. So when I made the sweet potato tart again last week, I couldn't resist trying Dorie Greenspan's "Princeton Gingersnaps" from Dorie's Cookies. I was eager to try these cookies with a triple dose of ginger: fresh ginger, crystallized ginger, and ground ginger.
The recipe gets its name from Princeton the town, not the University. Dorie got the recipe from Melanie Clarke, who served them at a dinner in honor of the Princeton Public Library. The first step in this recipe is to combine finely chopped peeled fresh ginger, finely chopped crystallized ginger, and a little sugar in a bowl and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes. The ginger is supposed to become syrupy, but mine never did. (I grated the fresh ginger with a Microplane instead of dicing it, figuring that if anything, the ginger would release more moisture that way and create more syrup. I was wrong.)
Another unusual feature of the recipe is that Dorie directs you to make the dough in the food processor. You mix room temperature butter with sugar and molasses; add the sugared ginger, followed by the egg and vanilla; and pulse in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger, and salt). I made a double batch of the dough and by the time I had added the egg and vanilla I could tell if I added all of the dry ingredients the food processor bowl would be too full to effectively mix everything together. So I transferred the batter to the bowl of a stand mixer to finish mixing the dough. The dough needs to be chilled for at least two hours, so I covered my mixing bowl with plastic wrap and left it in the fridge overnight.
I used a #50 scoop to portion out the dough and rolled each cookie in white sanding sugar before placing them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, getting 78 cookies from my double batch of dough. Dorie warns that these cookies spread, and she's right -- I didn't press down the cookies at all and they baked into very flat discs. Since I was planning to grind the cookies into crumbs to make a crust I wanted my cookies to be crispy, so I followed the recipe directions to bake them for 18 minutes to get crisp cookies that are just chewy in the center. They were definitely overdone for purposes of eating, although they were perfectly suited for turning into crumbs. I kept decreasing the baking time for subsequent pans of cookies and was finally happy with the gingersnaps that I baked for 14 minutes. Dorie says that cookies baked for this amount of time should be soft and chewy but mine were crisp outside and around the edges, with a satisfyingly chewy center.
These are really good gingersnaps. They have a real depth of ginger flavor without being overly spicy. I'm glad I rolled the cookies in sanding sugar instead of granulated sugar before baking, because I loved the crunch of the sugar coating and the cookies' eye-catching sparkly appearance. And for a crispy cookie fan like me, the texture was perfect. The cookies were equally delicious eaten out of hand as they were made into a tart crust. And I would absolutely made them again -- I've already added them to the menu for our upcoming annual holiday party.
Recipe: "Princeton Gingersnaps" from Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan.
Previous Posts:
The recipe gets its name from Princeton the town, not the University. Dorie got the recipe from Melanie Clarke, who served them at a dinner in honor of the Princeton Public Library. The first step in this recipe is to combine finely chopped peeled fresh ginger, finely chopped crystallized ginger, and a little sugar in a bowl and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes. The ginger is supposed to become syrupy, but mine never did. (I grated the fresh ginger with a Microplane instead of dicing it, figuring that if anything, the ginger would release more moisture that way and create more syrup. I was wrong.)
Another unusual feature of the recipe is that Dorie directs you to make the dough in the food processor. You mix room temperature butter with sugar and molasses; add the sugared ginger, followed by the egg and vanilla; and pulse in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger, and salt). I made a double batch of the dough and by the time I had added the egg and vanilla I could tell if I added all of the dry ingredients the food processor bowl would be too full to effectively mix everything together. So I transferred the batter to the bowl of a stand mixer to finish mixing the dough. The dough needs to be chilled for at least two hours, so I covered my mixing bowl with plastic wrap and left it in the fridge overnight.
These are really good gingersnaps. They have a real depth of ginger flavor without being overly spicy. I'm glad I rolled the cookies in sanding sugar instead of granulated sugar before baking, because I loved the crunch of the sugar coating and the cookies' eye-catching sparkly appearance. And for a crispy cookie fan like me, the texture was perfect. The cookies were equally delicious eaten out of hand as they were made into a tart crust. And I would absolutely made them again -- I've already added them to the menu for our upcoming annual holiday party.
Recipe: "Princeton Gingersnaps" from Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan.
Previous Posts:
- "Baked Sunday Mornings: Sweet Potato Tart with Gingersnap Crust and Heavenly Meringue," November 20, 2016.
- "The Means to a Delicious End: Gingersnaps and Sweet Potato Tart," December 18, 2014.
Comments
I use a scoop, and sanding sugar, and get about 56 cookies with a double batch. Also, Bob's Red Mill products now includes sanding sugar. I'm not sure that's how it's labeled, but it's the right stuff and available in the grocery store.