grandma jean’s chewy gingersnap cookies (aka my desert island dessert)

these cookies are near and dear to my heart 🍪❤️

At this point, we don’t need another Thanksgiving post, am I right? Let’s just barrel straight on into the holiday cookie issue season. But I might even seem late to this party when Costco is setting up their Christmas stuff BEFORE HALLOWEEN, if not September? August? I can’t remember. We live in Crazytown where time is a construct and you regularly walk into a store not really understanding what month it is based on all the capitalized holiday shit you really can’t escape from unless you’re like a true homesteader or something. 

Also a quick note about posts for the rest of 2024: Musician life gets busy, busy, and I cannot stress this enough: BUSY this time of the year. Gigs on gigs on gigs, y’all, it just don’t stop. This is the moment for you, when you see a musician walking on the street, heading from one concert to another, to say: “Thank you for your service.” We are tired, stressed, and probably hungry AF. But I’m going to do my best to keep up with the newsletter each week anyway, because why not drive myself completely insane, with holiday tunes going nonstop outside and inside of my head for 4 straight weeks? I’ll just keep them short ‘n sweet, just like me 😘

this moment is looming upon us

---

Several weeks ago, I responded to a post on

Lynn Hill

’s FoodStack Library “Open Kitchen Discussion”, headed by

Rebecca Blackwell

— a fun and thought-provoking series helping us food writers to think a little bit beyond what we’re currently obsessing over. This post was asking us: “If you were restricted to one dessert for the rest of your life, what would it be?” I did not have to think for more than 2 seconds before commenting with: “my grandmother’s gingersnap cookies.” There were a few comments hoping for the recipe, so here it is!

In my family, we’ve always made these cookies around the holiday season, but I could 100% eat them year-round. They are full of warming spices, they are sparkly, they are tangy and absolutely addictive. The name is a little deceptive — there is no snap to these gingersnaps. They are soft and chewy. And there’s a special ingredient that I think makes these cookies. Sorry to my MIL and my sister-in-law, who like to forgo this ingredient, but you’re doing it wrong. You have to include this special ingredient, and I will die on this hill. I mean, I guess you can leave it out if you really want to, but it just doesn’t make sense, you’re just making a huge mistake. 

(No one has ever said that I do not have strong opinions. And I share them with just about everyone, I’m a bit of an external processor.)

And yes, this is a family recipe. Beyond my grandmother, I honestly don’t know who else was making these. And she could have gotten the recipe from the back of a box for all I know — it was the 1950s after all. But who am I to be the gatekeeper of greatness? 

---

GRANDMA JEAN’S CHEWY GINGERSNAPS makes 52 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter (softened — somewhere between just soft enough to make it budge with medium firm pressure and almost room temp; these two options will get you different results, but both versions are valid in my book — for the cookies pictured below, i used the first butter option)

• 1 cup granulated white sugar (plus extra for rolling)

• 1 egg

• ¼ cup molasses

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

• 2 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp ginger

• ½ tsp cinnamon

• ¼ tsp ground cloves

• 2 cups raisins 

Directions

• preheat your oven to 375F, set racks to upper third and lower third of the oven, and prepare 2 baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper. 

• in a medium bowl, mix your dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves)

• in a stand mixer or large bowl with electric hand mixer, mix the butter and sugar together on a medium speed until light and fluffy. 

• add the egg and molasses and mix on a medium low speed until combined, scraping down the sides as needed with a rubber spatula. you’re looking to create an ooey gooey silky buttery brown mixture.

• slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in 3 parts, letting each installment of dry ingredients mostly incorporate before adding the next. scrape down the sides as needed with your spatula.

• add the raisins and mix to combine. 

• this cookie dough can seem very loose and runny and sticky compared to most other cookie doughs, especially if your butter was a little too soft to begin with, so we throw her into the fridge for a good 30 minutes to give her a moment to get herself together

• take the dough out of the fridge and fill a small bowl halfway with sugar for rolling.

• take approximately 1T (tablespoon) of dough from the bowl, and roll it into a tight ball. roll each ball in sugar before placing about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet.

• bake for 8-10 minutes. my oven likes 9 min 45 sec 🤷🏻‍♀️ they will not look done, but trust me, they are done

• let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for 3 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. 

---

here’s a good example of how things bake differently on parchment paper (top) vs a silicone baking mat (bottom)

---

I hope that you won’t eat these all in one sitting, but you might. You’ve been warned.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.

❤️ Sarah