On Bribing (III): Very ginger cookies

Six months have passed since my Comprehensive Examination; the deadline for reassembling my committee for my thesis proposal and first official committee meeting had come. I had been considering different recipes for this committee meeting for a long time before the appointed day, way before I even started preparations for the presentation itself. (Certainly you can see my priorities are in order.)

I am glad to announce that my committee meeting occurred this past Friday, and it went well by all accounts and in all aspects: we finished in a timely manner without sacrificing thoroughness (very important due to the time constraints of the professors in my committee), my preliminary data were generally convincing, and the proposed experiments and overall aims of my thesis proposal were accepted with only few minor changes (big thanks to my mentor who helped me make the aims statements much more elegant-sounding).

So now I can officially change my status to a "PhD candidate" with the grad school office and start enrolling for dissertation credits this summer. Once I've had this status change, I can just work towards completing my now-approved thesis project and once my committee says I've achieved my goals, I can write my dissertation and graduate! I am hoping this will all occur by sometime in 2012. So I've crossed the halfway point. Things will probably get more busy from here on out, but it'll be a productive busyness.


Most relevantly to you, my readers, the other big success at this committee meeting was the snack menu: sugar-free cinnamon biscotti (my special recipe for my mentor, to be posted another time), holiday snack mix (without the pretzels), my recent favorite chocolate chip cookies, and these "Very ginger cookies" from the blog Chocolate and Zucchini.

These ginger cookies, especially, were well-received. The pronounced yet gentle ginger flavor comes from two sources: grated fresh ginger and chopped candied ginger. The use of unrefined cane sugar makes the cookies more darkly and lightly sweet, so this is definitely a good choice if you're facing an audience that prefers less sweet of a dessert. My cookies came out fat and soft instead of the intended crisp and thin, but that may be because I prepared the cookie dough a few days ahead of time and left it in the fridge until baking them off the night before my presentation. If your dough is at room temperature, they will probably spread more and become crisp. If you prefer soft cookies, though, you can take the approach I took and chill the dough before baking.


Very Ginger Cookies (adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini)

Ingredients:
9 tablespoons (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon) salted butter, softened
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons unrefined cane sugar (I used sucanat, but turbinado or muscovado would work)
1 large chunk (thumb-sized, about 20 grams) fresh ginger, peeled
1 egg
1/4 cup cane syrup (I used agave nectar, but you can use honey, golden syrup, molasses, or even maple syrup)
1 & 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled spelt (I used old-fashioned oats as a substitute)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 cup (40 grams) finely diced crystallized ginger

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a mixer or food processor, cream together butter and sugar. Grate the peeled fresh ginger directly into the bowl. Add the egg and cane syrup and mix everything together.

In anther bowl, mix together flour, rolled spelt or oats, baking soda, and candied ginger. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients at low speed or pulsing until just combined. Dough will be quite sticky and soft. You can refrigerate at this point, but if you want more thin and crisp cookies, make sure you bring the dough up to room temperature before baking.

Scoop dough in roughly two tablespoon portions and roll into balls. Place dough balls about 2 inches apart on a parchment- or silpat-lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. Cookies should be light brown and look set (no glistening wet dough in the center of the cookie) but watch to make sure the edges don't get too brown. Remove from oven and let cookies cool and firm on the baking sheet for a minute or two before transferring to cooling rack to cool completely.

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies.