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| Figure 1. Pumpkin gingersnap cookies, cracked on top, with a coat of sugar on the surface. |
November 2013
Introduction
NFPA Ratings
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| Figure 2. Our NFPA ratings for pumpkin gingersnap cookies. |
Difficulty: One point for mixing, one point for rolling. Just remember to mix your dough before your roll, or else you'll have a big mess on your hands and your floor...especially over carpet.
Baking Time: If you could fit all of your cookies in the oven, this recipe would take you about 30 minutes to complete. However, if you are like us and only have one baking sheet or have an apartment-sized oven, you'll have to build more time into your schedule for rotating your cookies in and out of the oven. The good news is that if you run out of time, you can stuff the extra cookie dough in the refrigerator until you have time to make more cookies.
Course: Dessert, of course! Not a bad midnight snack either. And breakfast, if you're not to strict on that whole "balanced breakfast" thing.
Materials
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| Figure 3. Dry ingredients. Wet ingredients not shown due to gross aesthetics. |
1 cup granulated sugar (+ more in a small bowl to the side for rolling onto the dough)
0.5 cup pure pumpkin
0.25 cup molasses
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2.33 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
0.5 tsp salt
Methods
1) Preheat oven to 350º F. In a bowl or stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until smooth
2) Add the pumpkin, egg, molasses, and vanilla extract and mix until...you know...mixed
3) In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt
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| Figure 4. Raw dough |
5) Refrigerate for at least an hour but no more than 3 days (Who leaves cookie dough in the fridge for 3 whole days??)
6) Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Bring back the little bowl of sugar that you placed off to the side earlier.
7) Roll tbsp-sized balls of dough in the sugar and place onto the baking sheet, about 2 inches apart
8) Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies look crackled and set on the edges
9) Let the cookies cool for 2-3 minutes after you take them out of the oven (they will still be soft). Then, transfer them to a wire rack to cool them completely.
Makes A LOT (30-36) of cookies.
Results
These cookies were scrumptious. (n > 35...so tasty) They were sweet but not too sweet, they were pumpkiny but not too pumpkiny. You could taste the bite of the cloves and the tartness of the ginger. Every ingredient showed through and hit its mark. We surprised ourselves and others with the quality of the taste. In addition, they looked amazing. It is all too common that a finished baking product does not look like the pictures, but this time, our cookies looked like they came straight out of the blog that had the original recipe. Super easy, super delicious. So good we made a second batch.
These cookies were also very soft. Straight out of the oven, they did not seem fully cooked; however, they finished cooking on their own, and they remained soft and chewy.
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| Figure 5. The finished product |
These cookies were also very soft. Straight out of the oven, they did not seem fully cooked; however, they finished cooking on their own, and they remained soft and chewy.
Discussion
Molasses. It is sold next to syrup at the grocery store, it's brown like syrup, it's thick like syrup...but it does not smell or taste as sweet as syrup. (Trust us on this. Please do not dip your finger in to taste molasses by itself.) What exactly is this unusual pseudo-syrup? Our initial
hypothesis, given its proximity to maple syrup in its consistency, color, and geographical location, was that molasses fell somewhere in the liquid plant product
spectrum between maple syrup and tree sap.
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| Figure 6. Jar of Molasses (photo credit: somewhere on google.com) |
Let's chat about the etiology of molasses. For the sake of analogy, molasses is to sugar as
whey is to curds. That is, molasses is the byproduct of the sugar-making
process. To purify sugar from sugarcane, the cane is chopped up and
mashed, and the leftover sugary juice is boiled multiple times. Boiling promotes the crystallization of
sugar, which is extracted from the mixture. The leftover juice from each boil is sold as its own product - molasses. Light molasses, the byproduct of the first
boiling, is sweet but does not have a very complex flavor. This is what we used. Robust molasses, the byproduct of the second boiling, has a rich flavor and is moderately sweet. Blackstrap, the leftover syrup from the third boiling, has the lowest sugar
content but the richest flavor. Light molasses is sometimes "sulphured" to preserve it and add flavor, but this is not what you want...really ever.
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| Figure 7. Molasses on a Spoon (photo credit: google.com) |
Interestingly,
molasses is also used as the base for making rum (instead of, for example, hops
for beer), and it is added to garden soil to promote microbial growth.
References
References
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| Figure 6. YUM. YUM YUM YUM!! |
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