Disclaimer: I am about the furthest thing from a foodie short of being anorexic. Heck, I’ve been known to request Skyline Chili for my birthday dinner, and I’ll even occasionally succumb to the temptation to indulge in (::hangs head in abject shame::) White Castles.

Unaccustomed as I am to doing much of anything creative by way of cooking and baking, I was recently inspired by some of my fellow Glibs to take a stab at creating a new taste sensation with which to sweep…this site. Or at least my kitchen (which almost always needs sweeping.) It all started innocently enough – Our Mr. Brooks had a slip of the finger while commenting, and we were off to the races:

And thus the idea began percolating in my head. I’m not really hip to what would be considered the best online recipe sources, but one I’ve consulted occasionally before, with a search for the terms “ginger” and “cookie” (and maybe “thumbprint,” too – I can’t recall) yielded this recipe for “Raspberry Molasses Crinkles.”

For my own diabolical purposes, I first decided to substitute the aforementioned combination of peach and apricot jam for the raspberry jam called for in the recipe. I later abandoned the peach in favor of strawberry rhubarb jam because that heavenly concoction presented itself to me at the nearby German Baptist farm market. My kitchen, my rules. Further, to up the “ginger” component (because that’s the point of this entire exercise, now isn’t it? Other than an excuse to make cookies, of course) I decided to add a little more ginger in lieu of the cloves. I love cinnamon (see earlier mention of Skyline Chili,) so I wasn’t inclined to reduce its presence. I’m less enamored of cloves, which may or may not have anything to do with memories of the college roommate who was partial to exotic cigarettes, including the clove kind.

Once I had procured those ingredients I didn’t already have and had summoned the energy to attempt this brazen act of culinary semi-creativity, I set about putting them all together. As I bake infrequently, the process went rather slowly. I’m certain a more experienced and confident cook could whip it up much more quickly. Also, once the flour went in, the dough acquired a consistency that was more than a match for my poor little hand mixer. In the end, I did the last of the mixing by hand. Or rather with a spatula, because, you know, cleanliness. I crossed my fingers that the spices (remember: I kept the cinnamon, skipped the cloves and substituted for it an equal part more of ginger) would be distributed evenly through the dough. Working a spatula with crossed fingers is awkward. Not recommended.

Ball o’ dough and obligatory spice mess

I eventually achieved a proper ball o’ dough:

While the dough was covered in the refrigerator for two hours, I did laundry because it was Sunday and that’s what one does. Then I divided the dough and rolled it into forty-eight little balls. [Pauses for inevitable jokes.] After dipping each ball in the sugar came the most important stage of the process:

 

A little blurry because I was photographing my dominant left thumb with my submissive right hand.

Applying the “gingerprints.”

For best results, it’s critical that you use the impeccably-manicured left club thumb of an actual ginger. Lacking access to this may produce edible cookies, but you may notice that they lack a certain something.

As you can see in the photo, the dough had a bit of a tendency to crack along the edge when I pressed on it. I took care to pinch the resulting gaps in the edges back together as well as I could, not certain if all the jam might not run out via the cracks or if the cookie might not crack more upon baking. But mostly I was being obsessive-compulsive and/or anal-retentive.

 

 

With strawberry rhubarb jam, pre-baking.

With apricot preserves, pre-baking

Time to jam! At the request of my resident guinea pig taste tester, I decided to do a third of the cookies with just the strawberry rhubarb jam, a third with just the apricot preserves, and a third with a blend of both. That way, if the two jam flavors didn’t turn out to play nicely together, only a third of the batch would be affected.

 

 

 

 

Nothing at all scientific about blending the two preserves – fill about half a measuring cup with one kind and the other half with the other…

I actually had BOTH flavors from the Farm Market, but SOMEONE ate all the apricot preserves before I got around to making the cookies.

 

…and blend it together.

Strawrhubricot…?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, doesn’t that make the loveliest color reminiscent of red hair? I may take this photo with me the next time I go to the salon and ask my hairdresser if she can match it.

…and here, of course, is how it looks in the cookie before it goes into the oven.

 

Now, I put 15 on my smaller cookie sheet for the first batch that got baked (strawberry rhubarb filling,) and they spread out rather more than I was expecting, such that they mooshed up against each other and thus got rather squared off.

 

 

The second batch was almost all apricot preserves-filled (with a few of the mixed strawberry rhubarb and apricot) and on my larger cookie sheet.

Again, as the dough balls were placed rather close together, they mooshed up against each other and thus got squared off.

The resident taste-tester was particularly fond of these, which is no surprise, since said taste-tester was the reason I had to buy a SECOND jar of apricot preserves before I made the cookies.

 

Last, but by no means least, the final batch was entirely comprised of blended filling, and with fewer left, they were not nearly so crowded on the cookie sheet, so they came out closer to round. I also baked them for one minute less than the recipe called for, as the first two batches were ever so slightly crispier than I would have preferred.

This batch was, for my purposes, the critical batch. I considered the color of the blended filling perfect for fitting the “Gingerprints” idea, but would the flavors play nicely together? Would I have to abandon my beloved strawberry rhubarb for a lesser flavor??

Happily, that unfortunate circumstance did not come to pass. Taste-tester (We’ll call him “TT”) and I agreed that the combination was actually quite tasty.

 

Now, having made four dozen cookies and living in a home inhabited by just two people, you might have thought that perhaps I would have sought to share my bounty with others and taken at least some of the cookies to work to share with my coworkers.

You would have been quite mistaken.

My cheap, tawdry excuse was that even though I liked them and TT liked them, I wasn’t sure how well they’d go over with others who perhaps have more refined culinary tastes. One coworker in particular is an accomplished baker herself, and while I’m sure she would have been kind in her assessment because she’s a sweetie, I still felt a bit self-conscious about putting these out for public consumption. That’s my story.

And yes, of COURSE I’m going to include a music link! Have you met me??? (Well…few of you have. Your loss.) This song is perfectly on-topic, especially in light of my mention of the “misshapen” cookies from the first couple of batches. Fun Fact: on at least one occasion Back in the Day, I strummed a ukulele and sang this song, dedicated to a friend’s granddaughter, who had been born with one of the rarer chromosomal disorders (i.e., NOT Down Syndrome, but I don’t remember if her condition had a name) with the consequent developmental disabilities. But really, just about all of us who survive to adulthood are at least a little bit broken, bent, twisted (::glares pointedly at the assembled Glibertariat::) or dented in some way, so it’s really for all of us.

Profuse thanks to Brooksie, UnCivilServant, and Toxteth O’Grady for the inspiration and suggestions for this edible experiment, to Tom Teriffic (sic) for taste testing, and to Tonio for patiently helping me to prepare this post. I welcome in the comments your suggestions for improvements or variations, your howls of derisive laughter, and/or your complete disregard of the topic to talk about whatever you have to say at the moment. (::wanders off to grab another cookie::)