Interesting biscuits . . . at home

[dr_kromm]

Some time ago, I posted about ginger biscuits with chili in them for extra zip. Those were from a shop, but Bonnie and I quite liked them (that isn't damning with faint praise . . . I just prefer my cookies to be homemade). Anyway, Bonnie felt like making biscuits the other day, and decided that something in this general vein would be fun to try. So she dug out her recipe for hot ginger snaps – the intensely spicy kind that get hard enough that you need to dip them in tea – and simply added a teaspoon of chili powder to the usual cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. The result was really quite amazing! If you have a favorite recipe for fiery ginger snaps, and feel brave, give it a try and let me know.

Comments

[ferrovipathes.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were quite good.
Much better than those ginger candy!!!

[wombattery.livejournal.com]

I'm enormously fond of ginger, spiciness, and cookies, so perhaps I'll suggest something like that to my lovely and talented spouse the next time she's in a cookie-making mood. Though it'll have to wait until after this weekend's ginger-centric venture: brewing our own ginger beer.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

"Ah! It's hot! It burns! Argh! It sticks! I can't get it out of my mouth!"

To be fair, those are good, too, if you like hot ginger in concentration. But if you don't . . . well, then they're a bit like eating napalm.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Let me know how that goes; I have a lingering fascination with brewing. Many moons ago, mum and dad brewed both ginger beer and traditional root beer. As for me, I used to brew beer of the malt-and-hops variety – and also tried lemon beer – but that was years ago, too.

Where cookies are concerned, if you do this, remember to start with a spicy recipe for hard snaps. It probably won't be the same with the mild, gooey sort, or with the ones that are really sugar cookies and not molasses cookies. We use a variant of the recipe in this book.

[wombattery.livejournal.com]

Yum. Though, cyberpunk sentimentalist that I am, I try to get Ting Ting Jahe when I can.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Personally, I really love ginger, especially hot ginger. I've never seen TTJ in our local Chinatown, though, so I have to go for those expensive ones I linked up above. That's probably just as well, as I don't especially want to have highly caloric cane-sugar chews around all the time.

[zonemind.livejournal.com]

I do like the noise that ginger snaps make when fresh…

[wombattery.livejournal.com]

Not so well, as it turns out. It was both weak and flat. The amount of ginger was clearly too small (3 oz. for 2 quarts of water), and either the bottle we used for brewing probably didn't hold the gas pressure well enough or the yeast was bad. But I'll be trying it again with more ginger and a better bottle.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Trust in the power of Science! You'll get it right.

[wombattery.livejournal.com]

Success: a small hand of ginger (maybe four ounces) run through the food processor and boiled in a cup and a half each of sugar and water. Strain and pour into a clean, empty two-liter bottle with a pinch of bread yeast and a squirt of lemon juice. Fill the bottle the rest of the way with distilled water, cap tightly, and put aside for two days. It's gingery (the previous iteration was chopped and briefly simmered; I should have known not to trust that recipe) and sweet without being syrupy. And it's very nicely carbonated (used the right kind of bottle this time) with an interesting note added by the yeast fermentation. It's nigh-trivial to make, so I may have to try it again some time with more ginger for some real flavor.