Virtual Christmas Cookie Exchange Blog Hop ~ My Day!

 

It is Virtual Christmas Cookie Exchange Time! 

Welcome to my home for Christmas! 

This is my favorite blog hop of the year.

For this year, I wanted to make a gingerbread cookie with candied ginger. 

I started with this "flight" of cookies for sampling to decide on the "best" recipe.

In the end, I made them three ways for everyone to choose.

My Ginger Snowball Cookies ~ Three Ways 

are for the ... 

Please visit all my friends today: 

December 7

MooseStashQuilting

Songbird Designs

Beaquilter

Selina Quilts

Life in the Scrapatch (you are here)

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life 

Homespun Hannah's Blog

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Samelia's Mum

My Ginger Snowballs are based on this recipe:

Gingerbread Snowballs @ Crazy For Crust

I made this as shown and then added the other goodies.

I gathered my ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• ½ cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon ground  allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

• I preheated my oven to 325° and lined two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
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• I mixed butter in my kitchen mixer until fluffy. Added the powdered sugar, vanilla, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and molasses and mixed until smooth. Added flour and mixed until a smooth dough formed. The last part was done by hand. 

• For basic recipe, I scooped 1 tablespoon of dough, rolled into ball and in powdered sugar and placed on prepared cookie sheet.
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• I baked my cookies for 15 minutes until bottoms were just slightly brown.  After removing from the oven I let them set 5 minutes and then re-rolled them in powdered sugar.
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• For my test flight of cookies, made one plain rolled in powdered sugar, one plain thumbprint rolled in demerara sugar cookie with blackberry jam, 
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• two with just finely chopped candied ginger rolled in powdered sugar, 
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  two with finely ground walnuts added to the candied ginger
•  and rolled in nuts, 
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• and three with finely chopped golden raisins added to the nuts and ginger, two rolled in powdered sugar and one in demerara sugar. 
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•  Then Mr. Scrapatch and I tested while we decorated our tree. 

 In the end, we did not decide on a favorite. 

Mr Scrapatch enjoyed the ones with just nuts and ginger 

and liked the fact that the spices were not too strong.

These cookie were not very "spicy" on the ginger/clove scale.

If you like your gingerbread cookies to have a bit of bite,

 you may want to double the spices. 

I found the ones with chopped candied ginger, nuts and golden raisins 

had a nice moist and flavorful chew.

So I made all three kinds.

To the basic dough, I added one cup of finely chopped candied ginger and scooped, rolled in demerara sugar and baked this batch of cookies.

Then I added 3/4 cup of finely ground walnuts and made another batch rolled in the extra ground nuts.

Then I added 1/2 cup of finely chopped golden raisins and rolled this batch in powdered sugar.

The recipe would make about one dozen of each kind of cookies this way. 

I had hoped to have my Gingerbread Cookie Cross Stitch

completed for this post, but I have very busy doing other things.

I sat today and enjoyed my tree and latte and cookie break

while Maestro enjoyed The Tree.

Nutmeg snagged and enjoyed my comfy chair. 

Thank you for visiting us today.

I hope you have enjoyed my virtual cookies this year. 

May your Christmas be merry and bright and full with delicious cookies this year!