Soft Ginger Cookies

A few years ago, my church hosted a cookie exchange with different category prizes for treats the women brought to share. We did ask that any submission for the contest be home baked so when a particular ginger cookie won by being pretty much the best tasting giant soft cookie EVER, we had no choice but to accept the statement that it wasn't from a bakery. A bakery we needed to immediately locate and start frequenting. Which is not to say we didn't harbor some pretty deep suspicions regarding the veracity of that humble home baked claim, especially after Candice and I both went to our respective homes and promptly tried our winner's recipe the very next day, achieving vastly different results. Neither of us are novices to cookie baking but our batches turned out not at all soft and not at all of the texture or taste that we'd experienced the night before. (By the way, while it sounds like Candice and I deliberately set out to disprove the ginger cookie baker's claims of homemade, we were actually just wanting to replicate that fabulous taste at home. Candice because Elisha loves ginger cookies and me because they're my favorite. Neither of us was aware of the other one baking up a batch of the cookies until days later.)

Yea, so we have our suspicions about those Cookie Exchange Ginger Cookies. Either the recipe was deliberately sabotaged to make sure no one could duplicate the perfection of what we'd tasted, or they were professionally prepared.  Sometimes I'll be at bakeries and delis in the area and purposefully order a ginger cookie, just to see if it matches what showed up for our good-natured competition. That's how much the yummy memory of that cookie has stayed in my mind.

Recently I came across a recipe purporting to hold the secret for soft and chewy ginger cookies. How could I turn down the chance to see if I could come up with anything even close to what our church "baker" brought?  I had every ingredient needed so why not give it a go?

My batter, when completed, was so wet I could barely get it to shape into the walnut size balls. Maybe I should have tried a little harder but I decided to add a pinch more flour instead and that seemed to do the trick. I still had some sticky gooeyness to contend with but at least the now slightly firmer dough would hold to a ball shape.

I gotta say these cookies turned out pretty amazing. Lots of strong ginger taste and, just as promised, a soft and chewy texture. The Cookie Exchange cookies were huge, perhaps double the size of my walnut balls, but, other than that, I'm going to claim a bullseye on the deliciously soft cookie of my memories.

Soft and Chewy Ginger Cookies
from Six Sisters Stuff

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup margarine, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp water
1/4 c molasses
2 Tbsp sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together margarine and 1 cup white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, then stir in the water and molasses. Then add flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Blend together well.  Shape dough into walnut-sized balls, roll in sugar. Place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten slightly.

Bake 8-10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack.