What's cooking: Gingersnaps for Jen

My old Joy of Cooking doesn't only have roadkill recipes! It also has the recipe for my dad's favorite cookie, the gingersnap. Well, sort of. His cookie is my kicked-up version of Joy's, which is more like a molasses cookie: I nearly double the spices and add vanilla. The resulting cookie as a nice zing but not so much that a certain little girl around our house won't eat them.


This recipe is posted at the request of Jen, who remembers the ones I gave her when she visited and is hankering for ones she can make herself. Here you go.


A special note: Do not, under any circumstances, use blackstrap molasses. I don't know what that stuff is, but it was on sale once and I bought it to use in this recipe. The cookies tasted ok, but they looked like little poo balls. Not what I had in mind.

GINGERSNAPS

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Cream together in a standing mixer:

3/4 cups butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar

Stir in:

2 well-beaten eggs
1/2 cup molasses (not blackstrap)
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 tablespoon of vanilla

Combine in a separate bowl:

3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
6 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon clove

Mix dry ingredients with a wire whisk. Add to ingredients in mixer and combine until just blended. Form dough into balls and bake on greased cookie sheet or Silpat sheet about 12 minutes. Cookies should be still soft when removed from oven.

Cool on a wire rack. Transfer to parchment paper to ice with glaze of confectioners' sugar and milk.