These are thin dark cookies, on the crisp side, very grown up. They are nice with tea or coffee in the afternoon. They feel ‘low guilt’ because they’re thin, crispy and not covered in icing or chocolate.

The recipe is from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking with a few small adaptations. Yes, I’m slowly making progress on my ‘retirement quest’ to cook every recipe in the book. The recipe is quick to make and fairly easy. Once the batter is made, it needs to chill for an hour or so – factor that into your planning. I’ve used the melted butter trick in this recipe but you can also soften your butter and cream it in the traditional method.

It’s a King Arthur recipe so here’s your ‘unusual’ ingredient warning. The recipe calls for rye flour, spelt flour and crystallised ginger. The crystallised ginger is optional but makes the cookies a little bit fancy. They are still very nice without though.

Let’s bake.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 110 grams unsalted butter, melted in the microwave
• 160 grams brown sugar (light or dark both fine)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda – SODA not powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1 large egg
• 40 grams molasses or black treacle
• 100 grams spelt flour
• 70 grams rye flour (normal rye flour, not ultra dark ‘pumpernickel’ flour)
• 50 grams crystallised ginger

Method

1. Mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and allspice.
2. Beat in the egg and the molasses. I do this by hand but you can use a mixer. It might look a bit curdled, don’t worry about it.
3. Combine 50 grams of the spelt flour with the crystallised ginger in your miniature food processor or the small bowl of the big one. Process until the ginger is finely ground. You could try this in a mortar if you don’t have a processor but I suspect it would take forever and still be lumpy.
4. Combine the rye flour, the spelt flour, the spelt and ginger mixture with the already mixed ingredients. It will look like wet beach sand. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. This makes the dough easy to handle.
5. Preheat your oven to 170C. Err on the cool side if your oven tends to run hot or keep a very close eye on the biscuits.
6. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper. If you’re disciplined about the cookie size, you will probably need about four batches or four baking sheets to cook them . If you’ve got one or two baking sheets and are re-using them – its a good idea to let them cool for a few minutes before putting the next lot of cookie dough on them.
7. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto the baking parchment. I use one spoon to scoop and one spoon to flick the dough onto the sheets. See the picture below for spacing. I have a big oven and large rectangular cookie sheets – I can put 13 or 14 cookies on a sheet. Leave room between your dough balls for them to spread out. You don’t need to flatten or shape them – they will bake themselves into nice rounds.
8. Put the cookie sheets in the pre-heated oven. Switch them around about 7 minutes in (bottom to top, top to bottom rack). Bake for another 7 minutes for a slightly chewy cookie – 9 minutes for a crisper (snappier) cookie. Keep an eye on them – they will go from done to blackened pretty fast.

Thanks for reading the blog – I hope you’re enjoying the recipes. Please take photos if you make the recipes and let me know how it’s going.

Tags: biscuitsginger biscuitsmolassesryerye ginger biscuitsrye molasses biscuitsrye molasses ginger snaps