Norma's Ginger Cookies

I recently received a stack of recipes from my sister that once belonged to my maternal grandmother.

Norma Sophia Johnson Prosnick

Born September 1st, 1921. She would have been 90 last week.

My sister and I spent a good deal of time at my grandmother's house on Coffey Lane growing up.

Most of the memories I have of her surround food. 

Reheated homemade spaghetti when we arrived after the 2 1/2 hour drive from our house to hers.

Glasses of eggnog  and slices of patica at Christmas.

Bowls of rice pudding.

Liverwurst sandwiches.

And the ever plentiful pile of oatmeal raisin and ginger cookies.

I was apparently lucky I was as active a child as I was.

I've tried several different recipes for ginger cookies; trying to recreate that certain taste and texture from my childhood but none have really been exactly what I was looking for. All certainly delicious and all by definition "ginger cookies" but none replicated that snap shot of sitting on the lawn in the middle of summer with my sister. 

Until that little fat envelope showed up in my mail box. 

Not all of the recipes are typed out. Most of them are in her hand writing which make them that much more precious. Although I'm sure my grandmother would claim that she hated her hand writing and would be embarrassed that I would post something like that publicly.

This one has a little note at the bottom. V.G. Stay Soft. All of the recipes have a little something like that. Good. V.G.-very good. Mike likes- Mike is my dad. Or indications of quantities of ingredients that she adjusted or the origin of the recipe. All make the recipes absolute gold to me.

These cookies are super simple and the fussiest part is having to roll them into balls and coat them in sugar. But I find this an extremely relaxing and fulfilling task but that's just me.

The recipe specifically calls for Brer Rabbit molasses. Although I have this in my pantry I also have another brand that I favor over Brer Rabbit, but heaven forbid I should go against my grandmother's instruction.

Plus, I do adore the graphics on the bottle.

Do you know what they call molasses in the UK? Treacle. Except our molasses isn't the same thing as their Treacle.

The recipe calls for melting the shortening, letting it cool and then adding the sugar, molasses and egg.

Because I'm horribly impatient (BTW this is not a good thing to be when baking and cooking) I didn't wait very long to let it cool and just dumped the sugar and molasses in. I did know better than to just dump the egg into the hot mixture. How do I know this? Because I have learned the hard way previously. Scrambled eggs are good for brunch. They are not good in baked goods.

So, I stood over the pot watching while the sugar and molasses congealed in a pool of melted margarine. Completely separated. If you read my previous post you will understand why I started freaking out. Once again, second guessing my abilities in the kitchen.

I pulled it together. Tempered the eggs with a bit of the crazy oily sugary congealed mess and slowly added the eggs to the rest of the mixture.

This is what came about:

Yes, well, that's just perfectly fine, right? Disaster averted, Continue on.

Add the sifted dry ingredients to the pot. I really enjoy this method.

You could keep the dough in your original pot and put the whole thing in the fridge but because my dutch oven is so indispensable to me, I transfered it to the bowl that I had sifted the dry ingredients into, covered it and let it rest in the fridge.

If you opt to refrigerate it longer than an hour or two, which is perfectly acceptable and is what I did, I would suggest letting it sit at room temperature for about 20 mins. It will make the scooping and rolling much easier.

Like I said before, I find the portioning out and rolling of the dough my very favorite part. Scoop, roll, sugar, arrange on cookie sheet. I love things perfectly arranged. So satisfying.

In a world where I very rarely feel like I do anything correctly or perfectly, sometimes my kitchen is the only place that I can really nail it.

The recipe called for baking 8-10 mins but I found that after 10 mins they still didn't look done to me. So, I baked them for more like 15-18 until they formed craggy cracks.

Although this made for a lovely aesthetic it also defeated the purpose of my grandmother's note of "stay soft". If you want soft and chewy cookies do as Norma says and bake them for only 8-10mins. Mine turned out crispy and crunchy, which honestly were just as delightful.

Ask me how many I ate after they cooled.

The answer is 5. I ate 5 of them. I was in my grandmother's back yard. With my bare-feet in the grass. Chasing my sister. It was awesome.