GINGERSNAPS

Makes 4 dozen cookies

When I was a kid, my favorite cookies were the crisp little gingersnaps that came in a brown and orange box in almost every grocery store in America. Full of ginger flavor, those cookies kept drawing me in. Now that I make my own food, and I have a sense of what might have been in those packaged cookies, I can’t imagine eating them. These are the crisp little flavorful cookies I wish I had been eating back then.

• 600 grams Grain-Free Flour Mix
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1¼ teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 16 tablespoons (230 grams) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup (200 grams) packed dark brown sugar
• ⅔ cup molasses

• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
• ¾ teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour mix, ground ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper.

Combine the wet ingredients. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and brown sugar together until they are fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the molasses, egg, vanilla, fresh ginger, and orange zest. Run the mixer on low until everything is combined thoroughly, about 2 minutes.

Finish the dough. With the stand mixer running on low, add the flour mix, about one-quarter of it at a time, mixing in between until the flour has disappeared entirely into the dough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Continue this until all the dry ingredients have been added. The dough will be a little sticky to the touch. Don’t worry.

Refrigerate the dough. Divide the dough into quarters and shape each piece into a disk. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Prepare to bake. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Bake the cookies. Form small balls of dough, about 30 grams each. Put the balls onto the baking sheet 2 inches apart. When the baking sheet is filled, bake for 6 minutes, then rotate the baking sheet 180 degrees in the oven. Bake until the edges are starting to crisp and the edges are still soft, about 6 more minutes. If you want crisper cookies, bake for an additional 3 minutes.

Remove the cookies from the oven. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then move them to a wire rack.

Continue baking the rest of the cookies.

Note: We found that the cookies taste even better the next day, so save at least some of them for the day after you bake them. The dough freezes well, so since this makes a lot of cookies, you could easily set yourself up for freshly baked cookies for a while.

Feel like playing?

If you want to add more gingery pizzazz to these, throw a handful of finely chopped candied ginger into the dough. These are wonderful cookies for small ice cream sandwiches. They also make a great gingersnap crust for pies. Finally, if you roll the dough out instead of dropping it, and you frost them after baking, you will have gingerbread men.