alice medrich's ginger cookies
These cookies are among my favorites. I’ve been making them for nearly a decade, ever since I spotted them in Alice Medrich’s 2010 cookbook Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. I will bet you money that you can’t find another cookie recipe with this much ginger in it. That is, three kinds of ginger—ground, candied, and fresh—and a lot of all three kinds. This is not a gentle spice cookie; this is a cookie that screams in your face. Cinnamon, allspice, molasses, and brown sugar support the punchy ginger flavor, while a roll in demerara sugar creates a crispy-crackly exterior that gives way to a soft and chewy center.
Alice Medrich’s Ginger Cookies
Barely adapted from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich.
I’ve included weight metrics based in grams and ounces where applicable. My only change is to bake these as larger cookies. If you bake them smaller you’ll get about 50 cookies and should err on the shorter bake time. For the ginger candy, my favorite to use here is Reed’s Crystallized Ginger which I usually find at my local grocery store. If you want to tone down the heat, Alice recommends omitting the fresh ginger and decreasing the candied ginger from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup. But, me, I would never tone it down.
Makes 18 large cookies.
INGREDIENTS
2 cups (260 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
1/4 cup unsulfured mild or full-flavored molasses (not Blackstrap)
1/2 cup (99 grams) granulated sugar
1/3 cup (66 grams) packed brown sugar or light muscovado sugar
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh ginger
1 large egg
3/4 cup (4 ounces) ginger chips or crystallized ginger, cut into 1/4-inch dice
About 1/2 cup (99 grams) demerara or turbinado sugar or 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar for rolling
METHOD
Preheat oven to 350°F. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven.
Combine the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly with a whisk.
Combine the warm butter, molasses, sugars, fresh ginger, and egg in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and ginger chips and stir until incorporated. The dough will be soft.
Form the dough into 50-gram (or ~1 1/5-inch) balls. Roll the balls in the Demerara sugar and place them 2 inches apart on the parchment-lined cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the cookies puff up and crack on the surface and then begin to deflate in the oven. Rotate the sheets from top to bottom and from back to front halfway through the baking time to ensure even baking. For chewier cookies, remove them from the oven when at least half or more of the cookies have begun to deflate; for crunchier edges with chewy centers, bake for a minute or so longer.