Yahoo Lifestyle Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies Are the Perfect Holiday Cookie
If there is one type of sweet that I am an absolute sucker for, it’s going to be a chocolate chip cookie each and every time. Luckily for me, chocolate chip cookies come in all shapes, sizes and flavor combinations. So when that familiar craving strikes, I have plenty of options from which to choose.
Now that we're in full-on Christmas cookie mode, I've been itching to find a new recipe to satisfy my holiday chocolate chip cookie cravings. This time of year, I love adding flavors like nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger to the classic chocolate chip cookie, so I’ve been on the hunt for something with that flavor profile. And once.I ran across Martha Stewart’s Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies, I knew that my search was over.
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Described by Stewart’s food editors as “irresistible,” the combination of fresh and ground ginger, molasses and chunks of semisweet chocolate used in this recipe is exactly what sold me on the cookies in the first place. The fact that the recipe is coming from the Queen of Domestic Arts was just an added bonus. I was ready to dive in and kick off the holiday season with a ginger-infused bang.
Get the recipe: Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients for Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies
This isn't the simplest recipe, but it's worth it in the end. To get started, you’ll need flour, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, freshly grated nutmeg and unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder. In addition to those ingredients, you'll need 1 stick of unsalted butter, peeled and grated fresh ginger, dark brown sugar and granulated sugar, molasses, baking soda, boiling water and semi-sweet chocolate.
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Nathan Hutsenpiller
How to Make Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies
Start by sifting together the flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cocoa powder in a medium-sized bowl. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a handheld electric mixer), beat 1 stick of butter and the grated ginger until lightened in color, about 4 minutes. Add in the dark brown sugar and beat until combined. Add the molasses and continue beating until well incorporated.
In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda in boiling water, then beat half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Add the baking soda mixture, as well as the remaining half of the flour mixture; beat until combined and no dry patches remain. Mix in the chocolate chunks, then turn the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Pat the dough into about a 1-inch thick slab and wrap well in the plastic. Chill the dough until firm, at least 2 hours or overnight.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 325°. Roll the dough into twenty-four 1 ½-inch balls. Chill the dough balls for 20 minutes, then roll them in granulated sugar. arrange them on the baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, making sure to rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking. Once the surfaces of the cookies begin to crack, remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool on the baking sheets for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
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Nathan Hutsenpiller
What I Thought of Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies
As is the case with everything that comes from the imagination of Martha Stewart, I was absolutely in love with these cookies upon the very first bite. They came out so perfectly soft and had a nice, slightly harder bottom surface that added a very welcome crunch to every soft and gooey bite. I wondered before sampling the first cookie if it might be better off with a sprinkle of powdered sugar on top, however, it turns out that rolling the dough balls in granulated sugar before baking was more than enough in the sugar department.
This was most definitely a very labor-intensive recipe, and I did mess up on my first attempt. My dough came out too dry, and in the end, I realized that I had added too much flour. After fixing my dryness issue by adding a little bit of water and a teaspoon of melted butter, I still was not happy with the overall texture of the dough before baking.
In the end, I decided not to let my first attempt deter me from having delicious gingerbread cookies for dessert. I went back to the drawing board, reexamined my measurements and gave Stewart’s cookies another shot. What resulted was exactly what I was hoping for—a perfect dough that transformed into chocolatey cookies that truly tasted out-of-this-world.
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Nathan Hutsenpiller
Tips for Making Martha Stewart's Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies
1. Adjust the ginger (if you want to). Is the ginger too overwhelming? Substitute the fresh grated ginger with chopped pieces of candied ginger. The difference will be noticeable and could be what puts this recipe over the top for you. Otherwise, eliminate the fresh grated ginger altogether and just use the initial 1 ¼ teaspoons of ground ginger.
2. If at first you don’t succeed… This recipe is no cake walk. There are a lot of ingredients and it takes a precise measurement and some quick problem-solving skills to get these beauties to come out perfect. A lot can go wrong with a labor-intensive recipe, so if they don’t turn out as you expected, don’t let it discourage you from identifying what went wrong and trying again.
3. Mind your oven. This is good advice in general, but it's especially important during the holiday baking season: Buy an oven thermometer (you can pick one up for a few bucks at many grocery stores) to see what the temperature of your oven really is. Additionally, you’ll want to keep an eye on the cookies during the last couple of minutes of baking because they can quickly overbake and harden like ginger snaps.
4. Pack them up. Use an airtight container to store these delicious ginger cookies, and they will stay fresh for up to 5 days. That said, nobody is judging if they don’t make it past the first day.
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