Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies

Sometimes in the fall I get the uncontrollable urge to bake something gingery!  I have a few ginger treats that are on regular fall rotation at our house.

These cookies are a great twist on your plain ginger cookie.  They are slightly more chewy over crisp and of course, there is the addition of chocolate chips!   I often will use chocolate chunks as a substitute, or maybe some nice, dark, 60% chocolate chips (which I can't even eat, but I feel like other people love 'em!).

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

This recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart.  Makes about 2 dozen.

• 7 oz. good quality semi-sweet chocolate or chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 1/2 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions

1. Grease 2 baking sheets. Chop chocolate into 1/4-inch chunks; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and grated ginger until whitened, about 4 minutes. Add brown sugar; beat until combined. Add molasses; beat until combined.  Add egg; beat until combined.
3. In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water. Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking-soda mixture, then remaining half of flour mixture. Mix in chocolate; Refridgerate mixture for 2 hours or more.
4. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Roll dough into 1 1/2- inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar.  Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets.  Bake until the surfaces crack slightly, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

This is one of my go-to kid-friendly treats for holidays.  They are definately appropriate for any day, but I love that you can customize the filling colour to fit with a holiday (ie. pink for Valentine's day, red and green for Christmas, etc).  Today I did orange for Halloween.  The fact that they are easy to transport to school functions is a plus as well!

In my opinion, these are better than the "real thing," because well, they are the real thing!  Here is the recipe!

made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

For the chocolate cookies:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature, unsalted butter
2 large eggs

For the filling:
1 cup unsalted butter
3-4 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tsp heavy cream
desired food colouring or gel dye

Method
1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While on low speed, add the butter, and then the eggs. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart.  Bake for about 9 minutes, until cookies look a little crackly on the top
4. To make the filling, place butter in mixing bowl and at low speed, gradually beat in the icing sugar one cup at a time.  Add a little cream and vanilla.  Add more cream or icing sugar if necessary to achieve desired consistency.  Whip at med-high speed until icing is nice and fluffy. (Optional: Blend in a tiny bit of gel dye until you reach the desired color.)
6. To assemble the cookies, put some icing in a freezer bag and snip off a corner.  Pipe tablespoon-size blobs of cicing into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the icing. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with icing.