Adapted from The Grand Central Baking Book, by Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson.
For the holidays, we’d like to share a couple of our staffer’s favorite cookie recipes. This might be the perfect cookie. Staffer Adam Gelroth makes these cookies to great acclaim at least once a year, and they’re so popular that we decided to share the recipe with you! Thank you, Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson for creating this recipe. Because the dough is gooey, they recommend chilling it for half an hour before balling it up to bake. The cold makes the dough easier to work with. You can also coat your spoon or scoop in hot water or sugar so the dough doesn’t stick.
For about 30 cookies:
3 cups (15 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¾ cup (6 ounces, or 1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups (14 ounces) granulated sugar, plus extra for rolling
½ cup (6 ounces) unsulfured molasses (not blackstrap)
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 ½ teaspoons white vinegar (no, really)
Do this first:
Preheat the oven to 350 F and line 2-5 baking pans (depending on the size of your pan) with parchment paper.
Next combine all your dry ingredients.
Take the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, and cloves and put them into a bowl. Stir with a fork or or whisk to combine. Let them hang out for a little bit.
Mix together the gooey stuff
If you have a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment. If you don’t have a stand mixer, good ole elbow grease will do. Beat the butter, sugar, and molasses until it becomes fluffy- about 3-5 minutes with the mixer. Make sure you take a spatula and get all the good stuff on the sides while you mix!
Add eggs and vinegar.
Keep the mixer going while you add the eggs one at a time. The best way to do this is to pop both eggs in a cup with the vinegar and then pour them in individually, mixing egg #1 fully before adding egg #2.
Throw in the Dry Stuff
Remember the flour and ginger that’s sitting in a bowl? Add that to the mixing bowl a little bit at a time and keep the mixer going (slowly, now). Get all the dry and wet ingredients mixed together, making sure to incorporate anything that’s stuck to the bottom and sides of the bowl.
You may want to stop and chill . . .
for about half an hour. Let the dough rest and take a little vacation in the fridge so it’ll be easier to manage.
Make the dough balls
Scoop out golf-ball sized (or meatball or ping-pong ball) sized balls, then roll those babies in sugar. Plop them on the pans and squish into a flattened disk.
Bake.
Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time. The cookies should be dark mahogany with crackles along the top. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets, then enjoy them with friends and family.