Soft Ginger Spice Cookies

'Tis the season for baking up some yummy spice cookies!
I really wanted to make some ginger spice cookies, but I was seriously lacking ingredients. I had no butter and no molasses, which are both pretty key ingredients in most ginger spice cookie recipes... believe me... I searched!
I didn't find a recipe that would fit in with the ingredients I had on hand and, did I mention? I really wanted to make some ginger spice cookies.
OK. I probably would have been happy with making any kind of cookie, so perhaps I should re-word that.
I really wanted to eat some ginger spice cookies.
That little fact played a huge role in coming up with this super yummy recipe!

I mixed up some ingredients... and some spices... and started baking. The dough was sticky to work with. I won't lie. It was kind of a mess. If I'd have had a bit more patients, I probably could have refrigerated it a while and it would have been a bit easier to work with. But no. I trudged on.

Once I was ready to bake the cookies, I put a couple in to see how they would do. They stayed puffed up and rounded. I needed to flatten them. By this time I was really getting impatient. I mean, don't get me wrong... I did eat the puffed up round ones... you know, quality control and all. But they were YUMMY and I wanted more!

I loaded my pan up with balls of dough, then I took a fork and dipped it in sugar and flattened the cookie dough a bit. You know, like you do with peanut butter cookies. I had to re-dip in sugar between each flattening because, like I said before, the dough was sticky. It worked ok, though. See?

They just aren't as pretty as I would have liked. It wasn't until I made a second batch a few days later (I told you they are yummy!) that a "duh" moment struck me. Dip the bottom of a glass in sugar and use it to flatten the dough. It worked much better. Just look at the picture at the top of this post.
Prettier, right?

If you have a sharp eye and can tell (despite my crummy photography skills), you'll notice that the cookies in the top photo are slightly lighter than the other photos. Let's just say that this is a forgiving cookie. I didn't realize that I had almost no brown sugar left. I had half of the recipe made and ready to go. Oops! I used what brown sugar I had and I made up the rest with regular ol' white sugar.  It worked pretty well! Sure, that batch lacked the richness that a brown sugar gives to a cookie, but if you didn't know it was supposed to be there, you wouldn't even be able to tell that something was missing.

While these cookies are perfectly tasty as is, I would love to try them with a glaze.
A cream cheese frosting glaze.
With a bit of orange zest mixed in.
Yum!

My family loves these cookies, and I hope yours will too! (Yes! Of course I am sharing the recipe!)

Soft Ginger Spice Cookies
(Makes around 2 dozen)
What You Need:

1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1egg
3 TB. milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

White sugar for dipping

What You Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (Unless you are the patient type and choose to refrigerate your dough first, in which case you can preheat your oven when you take the dough out of the fridge.)
2. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and spice together in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the brown sugar and vegetable oil. Beat in egg. Stir in the milk and vanilla.
4. Chill the dough, so that it is easier to work with (...or not, but don't be surprised if the dough is sticky.)
5. Roll dough into balls and place on cookie sheet. 
6. Dip the bottom of a clean glass into some white sugar and press the cookies. Re-dip between presses.
7. Bake at 350 for 6-8 minutes, or until the edged are set and the centers still look a bit moist. 
8. Remove from cookie sheet and allow to cool completely. (Centers will finish cooking while cooking).
9. Store tightly covered, if you have any left over.
   
   Enjoy!

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