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12/18/09

Hanukkah Ginger Cookies

This past Monday I had plans to go to my friend Cindy's house for Hanukkah. Unfortunately, Cindy's entire family was not feeling well, and we had to cancel our plans.

Below are the ginger cookies I made prior to the cancelled plans: Hanukkah Ginger cookies. Of course there is nothing Hanukkah-ish about these cookies other than the fact that Cindy said she and her kids love them: I aim to please!

I used a Martha Stewart recipe, but ran into a problem when I noticed that my brown sugar was as hard as a rock. I decided to use Splenda brown sugar that I had left over from testing Robyn's recipes for the Diabetic Forecast magazine. The packet instructed me to use 1/2 the amount you'd normally use if you were in fact using brown sugar (I probably should look up a synonym for "use").

ARGH: the dough came out much dryer than I expected, but I proceeded to make the cookies. They came out rather "crisp," but not being a fan of ginger cookies, I wasn't totally sure of how they were supposed to come out.

Turns out, as Anna told me, sugar keeps things moist. Since I used half the amount of sugar the recipe called for, my cookies came out on a dry side.

And now a note of THANK YOU to Twitter: I posted a question about how to revive brown sugar, and someone suggested putting a piece of bread into it: worked like a charm!! You can also microwave hard brown sugar for 15 seconds at a time. I will have to keep this in mind for my future baking adventures.

Back to cookies...I wanted to decorate them and found Betty Crocker Decorative Icing in the store. The container came with several different tips and was blue in color: perfect for Hanukkah. But OMG it was such a pain in the you-know-what. The icing when it did come out, was really thick and not easy to work with. And the nozzle was really hard to push (in order for the icing to come out). My advice: do NOT buy this.


These are my best cookies:


10 comments:

Dewi said...

Happy Hanukkah!

Delicious Dishings said...

Great decorating job!

If you want soft, chewy cookies, try the ginger molasses cookies in this article: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2009/11/29/holiday_cookie_extravaganza/

These are the ones we make at the bakery I work at -- they're so good!

Gera@SweetsFoodsBlog said...

Happy Hanukkah and cookies too :)

♥peachkins♥ said...

Happy Hannukah!

Anonymous said...

Pretty! Saw them on tastespotting :)

Simones Kitchen said...

I hate those storebought icing cans; they just don't work the way they're supposed too and dry out when not used within days! Despite all that; your cookies look lovely, although blue icing would not have been my choice of color..lol

Lea Ann said...

Beautiful cookies! I'm impressed with that decorating.

Stacey Snacks said...

I saw this can of icing in the store, and was curious....I will stay away, but glad you tried it out first!
Happy Hanukkah!
Stacey

Anonymous said...

Love your cookies.

Paz

BlueToYou said...

i definitely would have eaten them!