Chewy Ginger Cookies
These Chewy Ginger Cookies are a soft and chewy ginger cookie rolled in sugar and is perfect for your holiday cookie tray!
This past weekend I was up at Marc's family cabin with his sister, sister-in-law, mom, dad, Lars, and our nephew for a weekend full of baking. Is there any better way to start the month of December? I don't think so!
We weren't originally planning to make these chewy ginger cookies, but my sister-in-law mentioned she wanted to make ginger cookies and my mother-in-law mentioned she loved my recipe. I knew the photos from the recipe were pretty bad, so I figured we might as well make them again so I can re-photograph them.
Plus, they are one of my favorite holiday cookies so I was all for making them.
The "photoshoot" actually turned into a hilarious cookie fest between the two toddlers. At first my nephew snuck his little hand in to snag a cookie.
And then another curious little hand found its way to the cookie tray.
While my nephew stood and enjoyed his treat, Lars could not just stop at one.
He couldn't even stop at three.
At one point we just lost track of how many cookies he had snagged. He was in cookie heaven.
'Tis the season, right?
Chewy Ginger Cookies
I can't blame the kids - these are dang good cookies. They are super chewy thanks to the use of shortening. Now, I hardly ever use shortening in my baking. I pretty much always think butter is best. BUT there are always exceptions and this is one of them.
Butter isn't a flavor that shines through in these cookies. That's what the ginger, cloves, and cinnamon are for. The key here is the texture and the shortening keeps these super chewy.
While you could definitely use regular sugar to roll the cookies in, we used sparkling sugar this time which made them even prettier and gave them an amazing crunch.
If you're a fan of ginger cookies - I would absolutely recommend adding these to your holiday baking list!
Chewy Ginger Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ cup vegetable shortening
- 1 cup sugar plus more for rolling
- 1 large egg
- ¼ cup molasses
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In large bowl with electric mixer, beat together shortening and sugar until combined, about 1 minute.
- Add the egg, beating until combined.
- Add molassess, beating until combined.
- In medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt, and stir well to combine.
- Add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating until just combined.
- Roll the dough into approximately 1" dough balls, then roll in additional sugar. Note: I used sparkling sugar to roll the cookie dough balls in.
- Bake in preheated oven 10-12 minutes.
- Let cool for 5 minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
- Enjoy!
Nutrition
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LIKE THIS RECIPE? YOU’LL LOVE THESE, TOO:
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These sound tasty Taylor. Mmm, I love ginger cookies.
So glad you enjoyed my molasses cookies, they're my favorite. If you want the recipe, I posted it here! http://www.playpartypin.com/2013/12/soft-and-chewy-molasses-cookies.html
Hi Taylor! Just seeing your cookie swap post. It was actually me who sent the matcha green tea cookies. So happy to hear you liked them.
Hope you're having a happy 2014!
well these are DEFINITELY going on my baking list...my dad ADORES ginger cookies and he will love these, as well as myself of course 🙂
I am making them again this week...y'know, since Lars ate half the batch 😉 Happy baking!
nothing better than cookies + babies!!! <3
These are still my all time favorite cookies....well, and your chocolate chip and snickerdoodles! (: I keep coming back to this post to watch the Lars and Finn progression of sampling them. It always makes me laugh out loud....such a great way to start a Monday. (:
I love coming back and looking at these photos too! What a fun moment that we captured 🙂