Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies with Orange Glaze

I ran into my neighbor, Pam, and she told me that tomorrow is her birthday. So I decided I'd whip her up a quick treat.

I thought to myself, gingerbreads would be good. Hmmm, what could be tastier than gingerbreads? And then it hit me, of course, chocolate gingerbread! These cute cookies were the result.

The orange glaze is a nice compliment to the spice and the chocolate. I use minced ginger instead of ground for a fresh gingery taste. This dough expands and puffs up a little during baking. Be sure to chill it or it will be difficult to cut rolled cookies nicely.


Chocolate/Gingerbread Cookie Dough:

2 3/4 cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup Dutch Process Cocoa
1 1/2 inch piece of Ginger, finely minced
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Cloves
1/4 tsp freshly grated Nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks/ 1 cup Unsalted Butter (room temp)
3/4 cup Darkest Sugar you can find
3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1 large Egg (room temp)
2 tbsps Hot Water
2 tbsps Dark Molasses
1 tsp Baking Soda

In a large bowl wisk the dry ingredients together (the first seven ingredients) and set aside.

In another large bowl cream the butter. Beat in the sugars a little at a time until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, and then beat in the egg on low speed until incorporated.

In a small bowl, or cup, mix together the molasses, baking soda and water. Add this to the creamed butter and beat for a few seconds at low speed. Stir in the dry mixture in several additions, remembering to scrape down the sides of the bowl, until just combined. The dough will be a little soft and should be chilled until it is firm enough to roll out. I divide this into three disks which I then wrap separately and remove from the fridge as I need them.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Any scraps should be gathered up and chilled as you move on to the second and third portions of dough. This dough is dangerously tasty, try not to eat too much of it. I bet if you removed the eggs and used a safe substitute this would be a mean addition to homemade ice cream.

Baking:

Preheat oven to 300f (dark/non-stick pan ungreased) or 350f (shiny pan, greased). It is difficult to tell when dark cookies are done, and these burn easily. Touch the tops of the cookies with the pad of your finger tip, the tops should be set but with a little give. Check them often. They take about 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.

The glaze:

1/2 cup of Unsalted Butter, just barely melted
2 cups of Icing sugar
Orange Oil to taste, or 1 tbsp Orange Zest
2-4 tbsps Orange Juice (room temp)
1 tbsp Meringue Powder

I tried a concentrated orange oil for this recipe, but you can use zest if you can't get orange oil. Melt the butter and stir in the remaining ingredients and one tbsp if the orange juice until it is smooth. Add more orange juice a little at a time until the glaze falls into itself without leaving lines or any peaks. It should be very thick, but runny. To test drop a tbsp into the bowl, if it sinks in slowly and leaves no trace of itself the glaze is the proper consistency.

Pour over cooled cookies on a cooling rack. Remember to put something under it to catch drips; a large cutting board, or waxed/parchement paper.

Decorate with a simple decorator icing. These will also make great Jack o Lantern cookies at halloween, just darken the colour with a little food colouring and get creative.

New Blog in The Links: hunger for light

Hunger for Light is my other "blog" where I post clips and things I find on the internet about science, art etc, but mostly concerning space lately. I also use it for jot notes, and eventually more art related things. I discretely added this to the links a few weeks ago, but decided on second thought that it should be mentioned officialy in post form. Otherwise some visitors may never notice it's existence.

Busy September

I realized tonight at my cake decorating class that it's been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd do a quick update. I am back at NSCAD taking full time classes again. I've started teaching cake decorating courses which seemed intimidating at first, but has turned out to be a lot of fun. It helps that I have a great group of enthusiastic students who really love to bake.I've also been busy bakeing, canning, and gearing up for fall in general.

Paulette and I have been talking about preserves since mid-summer and one day she offered to give Laura and I a ride to the supermarket on the way home from work so I could pick up all the stuff I needed to start canning. I picked out Mason Jars, pectin, vinaigres for pickling and salsa. Paulette and Laura are more experienced "canners" than I am, so they gave me tips and advice, they also helped me pick through baskets for the best tree ripened peaches. I decided to make peach preserves with vanilla and raspberry liquer.

Dan and I went to Farmer Clems on Sunday to buy some small cucumbers, but alas their time had passed. Instead, we picked a peck of barlett pears and decided to make pear butter with lemon and chopped ginger. Canning was a laugh, we stayed up until four in the morning even though I had class the next day. It was so worth it, and not as hard as I thought it would be. It will be wonderful to open a jar of vanilla peaches together in january. I also can't wait to give my very helpful friends a couple of jars.



Dan and I have decided that these will be our "Crow Time Preserves" because we've noticed that the crows are coming back to the old motherhouse, behind Mount St. Vincent. They meet in large numbers in the fall, it is a sure sign of the season turning. Later canning will be labled with the time of year we make it. Dans lables are still in the works.

We also made 4 batches of banana bread that day. Dan's been baking bread and montreal style bagels; in other words we've been having a good time feeding ourselves now, and preparing to feed ourselves and others in the future. Yeay food.

Dan has also been procrastinating from dish washing by making these crazy bubbles with the dish soap! At this point he can blow huge bubbles using just his hands.






I feel like I'm finally getting adjusted to being so busy, finaly. I'm also feeling really inspired by my cake decorating students, so cupcakes and sweets like you've never seen before are soon to come!