Cookies with Nana!

Tommy and Nana baked Ginger Snap cookies together yesterday. The house smelled wonderful and we wanted to share this delicious recipe with you! These cookies are crisp on the outside, a bit chewy in the very center, and absolutely beautiful rolled in sparkly sugar. They are a family favorite during the holidays and are surprisingly easy to make. (And very simple and fun for children to help with!)

First, Nana made the cookie dough.

Cream the following ingredients until fluffy:

¾ cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup dark molasses

1 egg

Sift the following ingredients together and slowly add to the wet mixture:

2 ¼ cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 ¼ tsp. ground ginger

1 ¼ tsp. ground cinnamon

¾ tsp. cloves

Once the dough is mixed, form into balls. You can make these any size you'd like, but you may need to adjust the baking time a bit so small cookies don't overcook, and large ones are done. The baking time below is for a tablespoon sized ball.

Tommy helped Nana form the mixture into balls, but he wasn't sure he liked having sticky dough on his hands.

Roll each ball in sugar. We used a large crystal sparkly sugar for this batch, but the cookies are very festive with red or green decorator sugar, and just as tasty with regular table sugar. Arrange the sugar covered balls on a baking sheet and bake at 375°F for 12 minutes. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for a minute to firm up, and then remove to a cooling rack to cool.

I hope you'll give these delicious cookies a try and let us know how you liked them!