After last week’s butter cookie coma, I decided to bake something less heavy and with a little more spice.
These crispy, yet chewy spiced ginger cookies definitely fit the bill.
As much as it is the season for sweet, buttery baking, I believe that there is always room for spiced cookies. Of course, gingerbread cookies are a popular holiday treat, but walk into any corporate coffee shop at this time of year and you’ll find the poor little gingerbread men slathered in thick icing. Compared to the heaviness of most holiday baking, I found these cookies to be light and refreshing. Plus they are so little that you can just pop one in your mouth every time you walk into the kitchen.
Those calories won’t count, I promise. 🙂
Bonus points – you can impress your vegan friends with this recipe because there is no eggs and no butter.
Despite our serious lack of snow in Toronto, I’m starting to get into the holiday spirit. My Christmas shopping is almost complete, I’ve consumed many Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolate drinks, my flights to visit my family are booked and Trevor and I are each well into our annual chocolate advent calendars (his is The Muppets, mine is Hello Kitty).
Now I can also finally say that I’ve completed some serious holiday baking. I was inspired to create this recipe based on the colour combination of pistachios and cranberries, which is also a great combination salty/sweet snack on its own. Buttery sugar cookies make the delicious base and the melted chocolate add the finishing visual touches, as well as help keep the loose pistachios from falling off.
These cookies make a great additional to any holiday party platter or cookie swap. You can even change up the taste by trying out different types of chocolate for drizzling. For this recipe, I used some more of my Cacao Barry Tanzanie 75% Cocoa, but you can use other dark chocolates or milk chocolate depending on your preference.
Growing up, whenever my family would go and visit Grandma, she always had some baking ready for us. My mom would always rave about her buttertarts, which is something I never understood until I was in my early teens. Up until then, I did not like pies or tarts of any kind.
I mourn those lost years of missing out on these irresistible tarts.
I’m not sure what the best part is of my Grandma’s recipe. It could be the end result of a light, flaky crust which I just found out is her rendition of the Tenderflake crust recipe found on most Tenderflake packages. It could also be the rich, gooey, buttery filling that puffs up and crisps slightly to a golden brown when baked.
However, I think it could also be the crunchy, chewy addition of pecans and raisins. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to what goes in a buttertart, but I find that I’m partial to pecans and raisins.
Whenever my Grandma would make the recipe, she would use a large, round cookie cutter with flower petal edges. I have fond memories of picking off the petals from my tart, one by one and eating them before I would devour the entire thing. I wasn’t able to find a similar cookie cutter, but I did find one with small ridged edges that came in a pack of 6 from Dollarama.
This isn’t an important part of the recipe, but I find that it helps with the end presentation. 🙂
When I sit down to write a blog post, sometimes I know exactly what to write and the words flow out naturally.
Other times, I really struggle with it. It becomes a war of incomplete sentences, misspelled words and run-on ideas that just turns into so much garble that I have to close my browser, step away from the keyboard and leave it alone for a few hours….or a few days.
Recently, I’ve come to also realize that I’m one of those people who, when stuck in a boring situation like waiting for a bus, starting to form blog posts in my head.
“So when I talk about the pancakes and how the napkin I used as a colour-pop is yellow, I should mention that I was inspired by the fact that up until the day I made them, I was tired, grouchy, and had not seen the sun in exactly six days…….”
Canadian food blogger, baking and eating her way through life. Musical theatre fanatic. Personal finance nerd. Sometimes runner/yogi. Green smoothies are pretty amazing.
