I’ve been in search of a GREAT crispy, REAL Ginger tasting gingersnap for years now. Many recipes on the internet claimed to be THE best one. One recipe even claimed to be the recipe for the old, hot gingersnap that Nabisco used to sell.
Huh! That was a laugh.
That recipe had way to much sugar for my liking, so DO be careful to use LESS than the 1 cup of mixed sugars rather than more than.
Many of the recipes had from one tablespoon of ground ginger to three tablespoons. I couldn’t even taste the ginger, rather only the molasses. I tried steadily increasing the ground ginger to the point that it was a waste of time, so started using minced ginger instead. The minced ginger change the consistency of my dough, so… back to dried ground ginger I went, increasing it substantially.
SECRET: To make these cookies crisp, I used clean bacon drippings in place of butter… and, to by-pass GMO flour, I use spelt flour instead of all-purpose flour.
Crisp Gingersnaps with Heat
Ingredients
¾ cup salted butter, softened
½ cup granulated white sugar
½ cup brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
½ cup molasses
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
¼ cup ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until smooth.
- Add in egg, molasses, vanilla and vinegar and stir until smooth.
- Put flour, baking soda and spices in a sifter.
- Add sifted ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until WELL blended. Using a sifter will ensure the spices blend easier and without lumps.
- Form the cookie dough into small balls (about 1 inch in diameter) using the palms of your hands, and arrange the balls approximately two inches apart on cookie sheets.
- Place about 3 tablespoons of white granulated sugar (not listed above) in a saucer, and with a small flat-bottomed glass, gently flatten each ball, being sure to dip the glass into the saucer of sugar after EACH use. This is so that the dough will not stick to the glass.
- Place cookies in the oven for 6-8 minutes.
- Cool on cookie sheets 2-3 minutes and then move cookies to a wire rack and let cool completely.
This makes about 68 cookies making them the size shown in the photo.
Left sitting out over night will help make these cookies even crispier!
If you like this revision (29 March 2015), PLEASE… comment below AND share!
Oh WOW! Look what I found at Costco back in December 2020!
Great blog, really cool recipe for Ginger cookies. I will try this one on my next batch, tried three others before this and all were sweet and a little lame. I’ll let you know how they turn out, my wife is an ex-pat Brit so the ginger snaps have to be just so.
I’m with your wife on this one Gary, so I hope this reaches you BEFORE your wife tries this recipe. I have decided to use the whole 120 g. bottle of minced ginger in making these cookies again. Reason being, this recipe is GOOD …but just noooot quite “hot” enough with the ginger. Am making them tonight so… MIGHT be changing the “3 heaping tablespoons of minced ginger” to “a 120g bottle of minced ginger” 🙂
Gary, I did make the alterations stated earlier to this recipe tonight and it worked PERFECTLY. The recipe above has now been updated to reflect what I discovered tonight. Finally getting the heat from the ginger 🙂 …though, don’t be surprised if I alter this a tad more later for even MORE heat from the ginger.
heya,. great recipe!
Thanks Dina!
i liked your recipe so much i even bookmarked it. cheers!
Good to know, thanks Eloida!
beautiful recipe! keep it up, will be reading through your other recipes posted here. thanks for this nice sharing!
You're welcome, glad you like it Aline!
These sound awesome!
They ARE Emanuele!
I want to make these for my grandpa for fathers day…just wondering if the ginger is supposed to fresh minced or dried??
Hi Meghan, I used dried ginger for this recipe… but am going to use the same amount of fresh minced ginger in my next batch. These cookies can NEVER be to hot nor crispy for my liking. Let me know how yours turn out, won't you?
this sounds like a very good recipe, thank you for sharing!
You're welcome Cristiana!
good day, found your website via yahoo. thanks for this!
Thank you Jason for letting me know which search engine you found me through!
These sound great!
They are Angel!
consistently great recipes posted here!
Well, thank YOU Ariane!
Love this recipe… always keep this great quality in your posts, and you will get even more visitors!
Wow, thank YOU Celma!
These sound soooo good. Think I’ll take your advice on the amount of ginger to add. I love hot, crisp ginger snaps. Thanks!
Me too Evan. Hope you love them as much as I do!
I just printed this recipe off. Going to give them a try. Thanx!
You're welcome Cristiane!
Will try the extra ginger as you suggested. Thanks this is a really good sounding recipe!
Hope yours turned out as good as mine did Leon!
Wow, decent cookies!
Thanks Lilli!
These sound heavenly…thanks
You're welcome Clesio!
Mmmmm, my kind of hot, crispy ginger snaps, thanks!
You're welcome Gabriela!
That much ginger? Wow, the really would be “hot”. Not sure if I want to use that much ginger or not, but I too like those hot ginger cookies so will give it a try. Thanks.
If you like your ginger snaps hot and crispy Omar, you'll LOVE this recipe. Took me a few times making them to get the ginger where it needed to be.
Great recipe. First one I’ve found that really makes these cookies crispy and well heated with ginger. Thanks!
You're welcome Damian!