I’ve been hankering after gingersnaps lately. Not any old gingersnaps, but the ones that come from my favorite recipe. You make the dough and refrigerate it, then, when ready to bake, you roll nickel-sized pieces in your hands, roll in some sugar and bake. What you get are soft, chewy cookies that are crisp around the edges from the sugar and just so, so good.
I’m not normally a cookie baker. I tend to like things that you mix, you put in a pan, and you bake. Rest periods for dough rising are fine. Complicated assemblies are fine. Adding frosting later is fine. But the reason I don’t like baking cookies is that every 8 or so minutes, you have to switch cookie sheets. That’s not enough time to do anything else–you’re tied to the oven until all the batches have been baked and are on cooling racks. And, who has time to stand there for an hour, doing nothing but swapping cookie sheets back and forth?
Yes, in theory, you can bake more than one sheet at a time, but in my experience, that always means that some of the cookies burn. And besides, we only have so many cookie sheets. What I normally do is put the first dozen in the oven, and then get the second batch ready to go. When batch number one is finished, I pop the second sheet into the oven and then remove the cookies from the first sheet, and get it ready to go back in again. Meanwhile, the cookies cool on their wire racks and, usually, by the time the third batch is ready to come out of the oven, the first batch is cool enough to touch and to move to a plate or tin without collapsing, so that there’s room for the next dozen to cool.
It’s a reasonably efficient system, but even with all this preparing, swapping, and moving baked (and unbaked) cookies about, there’s still at least four minutes per dozen where I’m just standing there, waiting. Once we’re past the first dozen, that usually means munching on the fresh cookies–usually way too many of them–and mostly just standing there. Possibly reading a book (since it’s, you know, me.)
So … baking cookies is a relatively rare thing for me. Probably about once a year. Almost never more than twice. And today was going to be the day. I pulled out my favorite gingersnap recipe to check the ingredients, and we had everything but the ginger. (Which, you’ll agree, is fairly important for gingersnaps.)
Mom and I were going to stop on the way home from the craft show, but we were there for so long, by the time we were driving home, it was about 1:30 and we were both hungry and more focused on stopping someplace for coffee than on detouring to a grocery store. (Yes, I am aware that grocery stores often sell coffee, but it’s not the same.) So, we didn’t stop, but she said she and Dad would go to one when they went out to supper.
Which was the plan. It threw my planned schedule off, but hey, if I’d mixed the dough tonight, I could still have baked them tomorrow, and all would have been good.
(Note the ominous verb tense.)
Because, while I was cleaning up from my supper, the phone rang. No ginger at the grocery store. None. At all. There was crystalized ginger, which sure, can be a nice addition, but is not a substitute to the powdered stuff for cookies. (And, no, the knobby fresh stuff from the produce department was not an option, either.)
So … no gingersnaps for me.
You’re thinking, so, Deb, you make them next weekend. What’s the big deal? Except, next weekend is the dreaded Stollen weekend. (You remember this, don’t you? No? Well, here’s my explanation from 2005, from 2006, and from last year.) There’s simply no way I’m doing any more baking next weekend than I have to!
The weekend after that is the MVFF Solstice Bonfire Party, so I’ll be a little too busy to bake that weekend, too. And then, of course, it’s Christmas, and too late to do cookie baking.
And all because our local grocery store doesn’t have ginger.
I suppose I could go out to a different store in the morning to try to find some, but by the time I got it and had the dough made and chilled, it would probably be too late in the afternoon for baking. I’ve got a very small window for baking, really. Sundays are the best day. Weekdays, I’m too tired when I get home from work and, anyway, just don’t have time to bake anything from scratch. Saturdays are my days for running errands and (preferably) doing fun things with Chappy. But Sundays? That’s the day I do things around the house. Cleaning, laundry … and baking. But there’s only a window for taking over the kitchen from about 10:00 – 3:00. If it’s outside that time frame, I start running into dinner preparations, or Mom’s tea time, or Dad’s snack time.
(Hey, I’m sorry, we’re a very structured family!) So–since I don’t have the ginger in the house, that pretty much means that these cookies just aren’t going to happen this year.
And, on the one weekend that I really wanted to bake cookies!
And, honestly, any gingersnaps you could buy at a store or a bakery simply do NOT compare. They have to be from this, favorite recipe, or it doesn’t count.
Drat.
Otherwise? Mom and I went to the local craft show like we do almost every year, but it was kind of sad. There were just as many vendors selling just as many beautiful things, but … nowhere near the number of people buying. Including us. I did get some compliments on my Christmas Tree Hat, though, which is always fun. I bought a lovely wooden spatula to replace the one that came with my beloved Edge Pan that broke a couple months ago. (You’d be surprised at how hard it is to find a sturdy spatula for cutting and lifting that’s no more than 2″ wide.)
Oh, and I bought Chappy some french fry-shaped dog biscuits. He was running low on biscuits anyway, and the packaging was so clever … besides, I was feeling guilty about being away for so long. (Hey, I couldn’t help it! You didn’t see the disappointed face he had when we went out without him this morning.)
I hope you all have a good night!
I’ll end with a cute link–a funny cartoon about the creative process.
And, how about this optimist’s view of the lousy economy?
Tags: Baking, General by --Deb
8 Comments »
What I’m saying is that, with all that lovely cold, cold air out there … what better way to swiftly cool a pot full of the chicken broth I made last night? Because, of course, there are all sorts of bacterial rules to follow–you have to cool it quickly before bacteria can take hold, and yet you can’t put a container of boiling-hot liquid directly into your refrigerator, either, because it will bring down the temperature for everything ELSE.
Evidence of how warm the pot was when I put it down (and how dirty our deck is).
Chappy, of course, couldn’t understand why I was bringing food out onto the deck–but, more importantly, why I wasn’t opening the gate so he could go PLAY in the snow!
Still, here’s the result. The color at least looks like chicken broth, but the spoonful I tasted still doesn’t taste like chicken SOUP. I’ll be interested to see if this gels at all in refrigerator, like my grandmother’s used to. See the pile of clean pots and bowls behind it? That’s what’s left to put away. You THINK this is just going to take one pot and then you end up with all these extras!
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