3000 miles 'til dinner.

Original MIL Mission HERE.

Warm, fresh baked cookies. Any kind… you can’t go wrong. I thought I’d make these cookies for a dinner party I was attending. Not only would it be a sweet treat, but the ginger cookies would also be healthy-ish. Ginger is said to have many therapeutic properties, including antioxidant effects. Love that! 

♥HERE’S HOW I MADE IT.♥

What I started with:

I asked MIL beforehand if the corn oil could be substituted for another oil, and she said that corn oil would be best. So I went and got some corn oil because you can’t argue with the best! I got started with peeling and slicing the ginger into 5 rounds.

I then put the sugar and ginger into the processor and pulsed several times until they were completely incorporated. When I opened up the processor, the wonderful scent of sugared ginger hit me. So good! It also reminded me of one of my favorite bath scrubs! 

I then added the molasses, oil, vanilla and eggs into the processor and blended until everything was mixed together, and then transferred the mixture into a large bowl.

I then got to work on preparing the dry mixture. I didn’t have any ground cloves, but I had whole cloves so I thought I could grind them into a fine enough powder. I first tried it with a mortar and pestle, but that wasn’t really working. I then transferred the cloves into a plastic bag and started to pound them into a powder. This worked a little better than the morter and pestle, but I still thought the chunks were too large.

As if she could sense my frustration, MIL magically called the house at that moment. I told her about my clove conundrum, and she said I could omit the cloves all together (wait, what? cooking ISN’T an exact science?) and either add more of the other spices, or get this… try to use the Chinese 5 Spice mix I had in the cupboard from the banh mi attempt. I was blown away! But indeed, the 5 Spice mix had similar and complementary spices as the ones we were already using, except for pepper. I asked MIL if pepper was okay to add in cookies, and she said yes — that there’s a trend with mixing sweet with salty or sweet with spicy, so it made sense. Great! I decided to nix the cloves and added nutmeg and Chinese 5 Spice mix.

I sifted the spices, flour and salt all together and added into the wet mixture until the batter formed.

I then put the batter in the fridge to chill for an hour.

After an hour, I removed the bowl and proceeded to roll the batter into little balls, as close to walnut-sized as possible. I agree the batter was much easier to handle after being chilled. They look like little meatballs!

I then used MIL’s original suggestion of taking a glass, oiling the bottom, dipping the bottom in sugar and then pressing the cookies down flat. It was pretty easy.

Then into the oven they went!

♥MIL MISSION #28 ACCOMPLISHED.♥

Delicious and healthy-ish — like I said! They were great right out of the oven, and I had to stop myself from snacking on them so I didn’t eat the whole batch that I was supposed to bring to the dinner party. I definitely had enough batter, so I froze half of it for another time… can’t wait! 

♥PLATE IT, ATE IT, GRADED IT.♥

scale: 0 (not at all) to 5 (very)

Cupboard to table time: 40 minutes

Difficulty: 1

Deliciousness: 5

Impressed Husband factor: 5 

Leftover-friendly: 5