caramel ginger crunchies

My lovely sister gave me a very appropriate and wonderful present at Christmas: a cookies-only cookbook. It’s called Cookies (of course!), and it’s by Australian chef Pamela Clark. If you’ve been tracking my cooking posts, you know by now that I like to bake, but cookies are far and away my favorite project. So this was really perfect. My sister tends to do that a lot: perfect, I mean. It’s mostly nice, but sometimes it’s a little crazy. In a good way.

In any case, she reminded me that I hadn’t tried a recipe from the book yet, and it felt like the perfect time to experiment. So here we go: specialty cookies and something of a recipe review all at once. With photos. Yay!

Caramel Ginger Crunchies

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 cup sugar

1 stick cold butter, chopped

1 egg

1 teaspoon honey

3 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger

45 wrapped hard caramels

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 325˚F. Grease baking sheets; line with parchment paper (I used aluminum foil).

2. Process sifted dry ingredients with butter until mixture is crumbly; add egg, honey and ginger, process until ingredients come together. Knead on floured surface until smooth (I just kneaded in the bowl…).

3. Roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls, flatten [very] slightly. Place about 1 1/4 inches apart on baking sheets.

4. Bake 13 minutes. Place one caramel on top of each hot cookie. Bake about 7 minutes or until caramel begins to melt. Cool on baking sheets. Makes 45.

This recipe was pretty simple – aside from the fact that I didn’t have any candied ginger on hand, and had no idea where to get any. Luckily the local Whole Foods imports Australian candied ginger… But that was only the first ‘hiccup’ in this cookie adventure.

Second, after I’d mixed up all the dough, the batch looked incredibly small. So did the teaspoon-sized cookie batter balls. But then I put them in my new apartment’s oven, and they flattened right out. Too much, in fact. And then the caramels didn’t melt right away, and I started worrying. Turns out that our oven is always about 25˚F off – and everything cooks a bit slower and a bit flatter than it should. Who knew?

But in the end, these are seriously delicious, even if they don’t look quite as ‘cute’ as the cookbook photos. I heartily recommend some ginger and caramel bites to chase away a bad day. Enjoy!

UPDATE: In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess that while these cookies are indeed delicious and just the tiniest bit gooey when fresh, they get ROCK HARD after a couple of days. *considers which hockey rink to donate leftovers to*