Gingersnaps with Fresh Ginger

Welcome to BAKING THURSDAY!  Lately I've been trying out some themed days of the week for Quinnstitch.  I wanted to see if I could actually keep up with it AND have a way to showcase all the different things I do for this blog and in my day to day life!  So yesterday on my Facebook page, I asked you guys what you'd like to see me bake today.  Gingersnaps were thrown out there, and I thought it'd be a perfect treat for today!

So, I have a question for you.  Do you ever have a recipe in mind, and then you go to the store to get some missing ingredients, and then when you get home you realize that you forgot to get something?  That is the absolute WORST and I did it today!  I headed to the store to get fresh ginger and molasses, not realizing that I was almost out of butter and I had no ground ginger.  Luckily, I found a recipe that only uses fresh ginger and I had juuuuust enough butter to eke out a half recipe.  And I didn't have to go back to the store, yay!

I looked around a bit for a good gingersnap recipe, seeing a lot of similarities between a lot of the recipes out there.  Some use molasses, some don't.  Some use just ground ginger, some use a combination of ground, fresh, & candied ginger.  Today, I just used fresh ginger.  I found a nice looking recipe over at Ambika's Kitchen.  I also really liked her recipe because it had a lot of really great tips on it!  I've not really worked with fresh ginger before, and her tip to put in the freezer before grating it was helpful!  I pretty much just used her recipe, substituting Mace in for Nutmeg (because I own mace for ONE recipe, and I thought I could use it with these cookies quite well).

Gingersnaps with Fresh Ginger

courtesy of Ambika's Kitchen by quinnstitch.blogspot.com
yield: about 2 dozen

[printable recipe]

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg (room temperature)
1/4 cup molasses (unsulphured)
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp grated cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated cloves
a pinch of mace
1/2 cup white sugar

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees
2. Sift flour, baking soda, & salt together.  Set aside.
3.  Cream butter & sugars together with hand mixer.  Add egg, molasses, ginger & spices and mix well.
4.  Add flour mixture and combine until all flour is absorbed well.
5. Chill dough for 1 hour.  Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or ungreased cookie sheet)
6.  Form dough into 1 1/2 inch balls.  Roll the dough in the white sugar so all sides are covered.  Put on the cookie sheet at least 1 1/2 inches apart, as they will expand as they cook.
7. Cook for 14-15 minutes, when edges start to brown.  Remove to cool on a cooling rack.

If you'd like to see something baked next week for Baking Thursday, please let me know in the comments!  If you like what you've seen here, please follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to receive updates.