Ginger Cookies – Cover to Cover Cooking

These Ginger Cookies are the second recipe in our Cover to Cover Cooking series, where Denise & Jacquie cook the entirety of Hedi Swanson’s ‘Super natural every day’ and share their experiences.

Jacquie’s Review:

I originally thought that the photograph in Heidi’s book was of the baked cookie. I was sorely disappointed that mine were flat and the sugar barely showed, and were generally much less adorable. As I stare at the picture now, however, I realized the cute button-like cookies Heidi made are clearly uncooked. I feel much better about myself!

With the apricots and the ginger I was able to convince myself that each little cookie was like a health snack… well, almost. There were so many, and they were so small, and four cookies isn’t ridiculous if they’re really half cookies… quarter cookies… okay, my rationalization might be flawed.

Do you break off the little bit of ginger you want in the grocery store? I always feel guilty taking arms and legs off of the little blobs.  I don’t use it that often, so it seems useless to keep fresh ginger root around, so I try to only buy what I’m going to use right away. I’ve since read someplace that you can freeze the root, after peeling it, and just grate from the frozen nub of ginger for whatever recipe you’re working on. Genius!

My cookies weren’t all that pretty- I blame on chopping the chocolate up too small.

Anyhow, overall these cookies were a hit. I was a little afraid the ginger might be too weird to send in with my husband to work, but the bowl came back empty (not that it ever doesn’t… either everything I make is phenomenal, ABB starves its employees, or Dan eats what is left on the way home). He brought back compliments.

I can’t wait for the next baking recipe!!

Denise’s Review: Holy 48 ginger cookies! I mean they are small cookies, but having 48 cookies – even if they are filled with healthy ginger and dried apricots – means you eat maybe A MILLION COOKIES a day (approximately). Good thing they are tasty! Additionally they make for good trail snacks – Curtis and I brought a few these when we hiked Red Peak Pass, and they were pretty good chocolaty pick-me-uppers for the first couple days.

a blurry melting ginger cookie

Making these little guys I (as is typical when cooking) did not entirely read through the recipe before jumping in, because who does that? It’s cooking not science, the fun is getting to work on your toes! Anyhow, sentence #1 of the recipe: Put sugar in bowl… Hedi, why is this the first step? This sugar is, as I latter figured out, what coats the cookies prior baking. In my mind this means this sugar step should be the last sentence before baking, as to avoid cluttering the counter and become confused.

Confused Denise (probably speaking to the cat): “What this sugar is for? Why it was so imperative for it to be placed out in step one?”

Then, being the go getter that I am, after step two of chopping the chocolate, I was so certain that it was to be added to the sugar bowl – after all we did just pour that sugar in a bowl for NO GOOD REASON – plus, nobody told me where to put the chocolate. Was I supposed to leave it to melt on my cutting board in my non-air-conditioned kitchen? MELTING!

Apparently I was, because this is the chocolate that is actually used in third to last step (Why Hedi, Why?) to add to the cookie dough itself right before chilling. I ended up scooping chocolate bits out of my sugar with a slotted spoon (A move I like to call “Cleaning the kitty litter”), and leaving some smaller chocolate fines in my coating sugar mixture which made the cookies messier to eat and make and slightly less attractive. Lessons learned and noted!