Cooking In Boone ... Staunton: Gingerbread!

My only previous experience with gingerbread was of the structural type. The stuff you use for making gingerbread hoses is more like Medium Density Fiberboard than an actual food product.So, when I went looking for a gingerbread recipe, I went looking for a good soft one…. So.. here we go.

First, you need 3 sticks of softened butter.

Then, 1 Cup of brown sugar.

Mix those together until it’s a smooth sugary buttery concoction.

Once they’re mixed up, toss in 2 eggs.

and mix them in…..then, add 1 cup of molasses.

and mix well…..

Next, it’s time for the spices.

3/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 2 tsp ginger.

Mix all of that in… then it’s time to start adding flour. This recipe called for 5 cups of flour, which seems like a lot, but the structural gingerbread took closer to 7-8 if I remember correctly.

It' might take a minute to mix up… so be patient.

So, at this point, I had finished the recipe, and went ahead with the rest of the directions, Even though I suspected that the dough was a bit thin, I got to thinking about the time it was going to spend in the fridge, and the fact that it would be rolled out onto a floured counter-top.

So, at this point, the recipe says to break the down down into about 4 pieces, beat them reasonably flat, wrap them in plastic, and put them in the fridge.

So… the next morning, I pulled the dough out and got things ready….

I put out wax paper and a bit of flour, and got to rolling….

to:

So… now, we’re ready to cut out some shapes…

Here’s where we ran into a problem. If I would have been able to cut the dough as soon as it came out of the fridge, it would have been fine. However, the time out of the fridge, and rolling it out made it a pain in the ass to work with. It was too soft, and stuck to the floured rolling pin and the wax paper. My guess is that the dough was far too wet, and was picking up all of the flour I had put down on the wax paper.So…. we ended up with this:

So… shapes are pretty and all.. but that would have required putting the dough back into the mixer, and adding more flour until it was right, then back in the fridge for a few hours again…. So instead, we got regular, round cookies.