Another We Should Cocoa challenge, courtesy of Chocolate Teapot and Chocolate Log Blog. This month’s challenge is hosted by Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes and February’s ingredient is ginger. Which is lovely, as I’ve had a hankering for chocolate chip cookies all month, and adding a ginger kick to them can only make them better. I also added a dash of cayenne pepper to spice things up a notch! The cookies look sort of… boring – I was hoping for chunky, crinkle-type of cookie, but got a smooth one instead. But, they taste great, so we shall not judge a cookie by its cover.




Ginger Chocolate Chip Cookies




175 g butter, at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/5 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
175 g dark chocolate, chopped
50 g crystallised ginger, chopped




1/4 cup brown cane sugar (for rolling the cookies; optional)




Preheat oven to 180 C. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Cream butter, brown sugar and molasses with an electric mixer until thoroughly combined and fluffy.
Add egg and vanilla extract, mix well.
Combine flour, ginger, cayenne, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to the butter-egg mixture and mix.
Fold in chopped chocolate and crystallised ginger.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll the balls in brown cane sugar. Place on the cookie sheet, leaving a few inches between the balls.
Bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes.

Makes 36-40 cookies.




Next time I’ll either cut down the amount of brown sugar in the dough to ¾ cup or omit the brown cane sugar: these turned out pret-ty sweet (not that it’s a bad thing, of course!). I also meant to use 2 teaspoons of baking soda instead of a baking powder & baking soda combo, but ran out of baking soda and had to improvise – so that’s the explanation to that weirditude. Not scientific, not baking chemistry related, just bad planning.