Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Soft Gingersnaps with White Chocolate Chips


Good Morning and Welcome to Adventures In Baking!  One of the traditional holiday flavors I wanted to tackle this month is Gingerbread.  I thought about baking gingerbread and building a gingerbread house out of it, but let's face it......while the opportunity for misadventure is extremely high, it's way too much work with everything else I have going on right  now.  Maybe in January, once things get back to 'normal' around here and I don't leave the house because it's too darn cold and windy I'll tackle a gingerbread house.  Errr, a ginger-snowman-bread house. So instead of bread, I decided to try out these gingersnap cookies with white chocolate.  You can click right here to see the recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod.  This is the first recipe I've tried from the site, but it comes highly recommended.


 
The ingredients.  Let's talk about molasses for just a moment.  Have you ever tasted molasses?  Or smelled molasses and lived to tell the tale?  Cause the smell about knocked me to the floor.  Who in the world took a whiff of this stuff and thought hmmmmm, I bet this will taste really good on my breakfast? Bleck.  Now, up till this point, for some reason,  I associated molassas with pancakes.  Or grits.  Although I'm not sure what grits are either.  I thought it was sweet, like syrup.  Oh, how wrong I was.  In fact, when I was in the store searching for the bottle, I started in the pancake syrup aisle.  When I couldn't  find it there, I headed to the area with ketchup and bar-b-que sauce.  Nope, not there either.  The only other place I could think of was with the salad dressing.  Not because I thought it would go with salad, but it's an area that has lots of things in bottles.  When I couldn't find it there either, I headed back to the pancake syrup.  And, sure enough, there it was, in the corner, on the bottom shelf, beside the maple syrup.  Apparently not too popular of an item if it's hiding down there.  Let's continue on with the cookies, but we'll revisit the molasses again here soon.
 
 
Let's get started.  See my new assistant!!  Isn't she pretty?  All bright and shiny.  I finally did it.  And I got a good deal on it.  Yipee!!  I haven't named her yet, but I'm open to suggestions.  Just had to share.....now back to our cookies.
 
 
Cream together butter and sugar until smooth and creamy.


Next step.  Beat in the molasses, canola oil, vanilla, baking soda, salt and spices.  Mix well.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth.  OK, back to the molasses....As I was placing the lid back on the jar I happened to notice this little tidbit on the front label:  Fun Fact - Did you know elephants love molasses?  Why no, I did not know elephants love molasses.  Way to expand my trivia knowledge.

 
Slowly add in the flour and stir in the white chocolate chips. 
 
 

Final step.  Scoop the dough into balls and roll in sugar.  Bake for 10 minutes. 


Taste test.  I have to be honest with you, I was scared to taste these after enduring the smell of the molasses.  My opinion ...... They're pretty good.  The sugar coating and white chocolate give them a little bit of sweetness and they now smell like cookies rather than liquid tree bark.  Or what I imagine liquid tree bark smells like.  My mom is gonna like these. 

Well, that's it for another episode of Adventures In Baking.  I'm packing up my cookies and heading out to sunny Florida for a Disney vacation with the family but I'll be back here next week to share a Peppermint adventure that's perfect for the holdiays.

Enjoy
-Teddra 

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