Ginger snaps!

For our wedding, I wanted to make cookies for the wedding favors. However, given everything we were trying to pull together, plus all the pre-wedding jitters, I was not able to do that. We end up filling favor bags with Asher's Dark Chocolate nonpareils and Hershey's kisses (sorry...no pictures).

When we got back to Los Angeles, we had a dinner celebration with our friends who could not make it to Philly for the wedding. For this event, I could execute my cookie favor plan! I found a recipe in Sunset magazine (December 2008) that said it made about 100 cookies...Perfect! These were super easy to make and very tasty to eat...The magazine article had a few different variations of cookies that you could make with this dough including rolled out shapes, Dulce De Leche sandwich cookies and Lemon Meringue-filled gingersnap snowflake cookies...I went with the simple "roll in sugar" method and then put about 3 cookies in each favor bag.

1 cup butter, room tempeture

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup unsulphured molasses (I used Grandmom's which is pretty easy to find at any grocery store)

1 large egg

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp each: ground cloves, nutmeg and freshly ground pepper

1. Beat butter and brown sugar together in a bowl with a mixer on medium speed until well blended. Mix in molasses, then egg, until blended, scraping bowl as necessary.

2. In small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices; add to butter mixture on low speed mixing until combined.

3. Divide dough in half. Shape each into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 3 hrs.

4. In a bowl, mix 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 cup granulated sugar.

5. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Unwrap dough roll into individual balls (about 1 tbsp each) and drop in sugar mixture. Roll ball around to coat and then transfer to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

6. Bake cookies until dry looking and just starting to brown on edges about 8 minutes. Let cookies cool on racks.