There are a few ingredients that I happen to have absurd quantities of at the moment, and one of them is crystallized ginger. So I've been keeping an eye out for recipes where I can put it to use, and I was happy to come across Susan Spungen's recipe for Gingery Brownie Crinkle Cookies. It uses candied ginger only as a garnish, but I really like the combination of chocolate and ginger. Years ago I discovered Susan's recipe for Double-Ginger Chocolate Chunk Cookies and it quickly became a favorite.
This recipe is relatively simple and the dough doesn't require any chilling before it's baked. You whip room temperature eggs with white sugar and brown sugar until pale and fluffy; add grated fresh ginger and vanilla; incorporate a cooled mixture of melted butter and bittersweet chocolate; mix in the dry ingredients (flour, Dutch cocoa powder, baking powder, and kosher salt); and stir in chocolate chips. The recipe calls for quite a bit of grated ginger, but I didn't have to deal with the headache of peeling and grating my own because I had a bag of grated ginger from The Farm at Red Hill in my freezer. All I had to do was break off a frozen chunk and leave it out for a bit to defrost.
I used a #40 scoop to portion out the dough and got 22 cookies from a batch. I sprinkled diced crystallized ginger on top of each cookie before baking, and as one would expect from the name of the recipe, the cookies developed pretty cracked tops.
This cookie was terrific. My cookies were not fudgy or dense but had a luxuriously smooth, almost creamy interior that was both unusual and immensely pleasing. The grated ginger added a lot of flavor but not a lot of heat -- it evoked something almost like a cooling sensation. The chocolate chips and the crystallized ginger both added more flavor and interesting textures. This cookie was a standout. It was both straightforward and sophisticated at the same time, and I will definitely make this recipe again!
Recipe: "Gingery Brownie Crinkle Cookies" by Susan Spungen, from The New York Times.
This recipe is relatively simple and the dough doesn't require any chilling before it's baked. You whip room temperature eggs with white sugar and brown sugar until pale and fluffy; add grated fresh ginger and vanilla; incorporate a cooled mixture of melted butter and bittersweet chocolate; mix in the dry ingredients (flour, Dutch cocoa powder, baking powder, and kosher salt); and stir in chocolate chips. The recipe calls for quite a bit of grated ginger, but I didn't have to deal with the headache of peeling and grating my own because I had a bag of grated ginger from The Farm at Red Hill in my freezer. All I had to do was break off a frozen chunk and leave it out for a bit to defrost.
I used a #40 scoop to portion out the dough and got 22 cookies from a batch. I sprinkled diced crystallized ginger on top of each cookie before baking, and as one would expect from the name of the recipe, the cookies developed pretty cracked tops.
Recipe: "Gingery Brownie Crinkle Cookies" by Susan Spungen, from The New York Times.
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