Gingerbread People!

 

Mmmm...I love the smell of Christmas baking. My family used to never do any Christmas baking, but now I want to make it a tradition, just because it makes the whole house smell so nice and warm and cozy (cosy? I always get confused). And of course, we get yummy cookies to eat for days after as well.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

A close-up...see that chocolate melting?

 I have made these over and over since I first discovered them in the summer. They are so very delicious as chilled cookie bars...mmm. I've made it with both turbinado and granulated sugars (and brown, for that matter), and while the turbinado adds a good crunch to these, I personally just like them with regular old sugar...hahaha because I don't normally have turbinado sugar at home, I used up all the little sugar packets we had saved up from Starbucks, etc...I got a full cup of sugar that way, though it took a while! It was a nice treat, and since it was for a birthday present, I didn't mind taking a little extra time to try it out.

These are slightly oily, more so as bars because probably the oil pools a bit or something...oh well, if you chill them they're totally fine. Excellent, even.  These are my favourite no-butter chocolate chip cookies :)

Clementine Cake! So good, and so healthy!

My mum wanted me to use up some of the many clementines we had lying around the kitchen...my family likes these little oranges, but there are just too many in a bag to finish all at once.
So I did a quick search for clementine/orange cake because for some reason I was really craving for some cake. And my search page was flooded with this one recipe. I looked it over, and I was shocked.
No added oils or fats, no flour in sight, and just five ingredients?! I thought this cake would not, could not work.
I was wrong.
The recipe yielded a beautiful golden-yellow cake with a cool and refreshing taste. I stuck it in the fridge after a day and it was even better cold! I loved the citrusy fragrance and flavour of it. The clementine juices seemed to be absorbed by the almonds as the days went by.

Oh yeah, this is important: IT IS MUCH MUCH BETTER A DAY LATER THAN FRESH OUT OF THE OVEN! Boy, was this concept hard for my household to understand. Except after they had a bit on the first day, while it was still warm, they didn't really like it. Something to do with the texture. My sis hates nuts. Or anything healthy, for that matter. And my dad, who once told me to look for recipes without much flour in it, told me to just stick with the flour. Psht. I knew it.

Anyhoo, I certainly liked it. It was a nice change from the typical cake, and I was getting tired of chocolate anyway. Actually, I don't think I've ever really loved chocolate cake. Clogs up my tastebuds too much.

Pumpkin Pie...Long Overdue!

Well I meant to post this for Thanksgiving...wayyy back in October. At least we got to eat some homemade pie at the right time then!

The crust was really too salt, so next time, if I decide to make it (though I probably will do a different pie next year...maybe blueberry..mmm) I'll cut down the salt, maybe add sugar instead. It also got soggy by the second or third day, so I resorted to just eating the filling, which was plenty good by itself! This was a butterless crust & pie I found on allrecipes.

Happy Lunar New Year! &..The English Patient Book Review

Have a happy happy Lunar New Year everyone...

I was going to post about the Clementine Cake I made a couple weeks ago but...it's almost 3am! Uhoh. It's not going to be a good day tomorrow...I mean, later today. I will post about the cake (which was delicious, by the way) later on then.

The Most Amazing Brownies Ever. Period.

My friends DEVOURED these brownies. They ate a double batch at one party. Then they polished off a triple batch at the next. We were sugar high for the next hour, but that was alright, because these were amazing. Hard to stop at just one piece.I researched a long time to find a good butterless brownie recipe. Actually, I've only ever tried one recipe, and every time I want to try a different one, I can't bring myself to do it because I miss these ones so much, and if you're gonna bake a sweet treat then why wouldn't you go for your favourite? I've been meaning to try black-bean brownies for a while now, so hopefully one day I'll get a little tired of these and bake up a batch of those!
My sister, who really rarely eats a lot of sweets, LOVES this. She keeps telling me she'll get fat, the skinny squirt.

New Year's Resolutions

Here we go...

1) Do 6 laps on lane 8 on the track in 15 minutes. I've slowly slowed down over the course of the last three months, which is sad because I'd built up to 6 laps in 16 minutes or so... :( I don't like winter. It is not a good season to be out in the weather.

2) Drink two extra glasses of water than I usually would.

3) Get to bed at 11:30pm. No more 1am homework parties.

4) Get into UBC! Wheeee

5) Bake some of this stuff:
Lemon Olive Oil Cake
Ice Cream Scones
Sweet Potato Bundt Cake
Chocolate Puddle Cookies
Oven-Baked Fries
Lemon Meringue Pie
Chocolate Silk Pie
Blueberry Pie
Carrot Cake

...bake my sister some birthday cupcakes. And cake pops. She likes the pretty stuff.

6) 1 book/month. Start with Wuthering Heights.

7) Practice speaking French because God knows I've forgotten half the language. Maybe I should sign up for Explore again this year...

8) Get my driver's license. Immediately.

9) Start swimming again.

10) Check out some new restaurants. Stop going to Earls and Hmart and Whole Foods to 'eat out'.

Stuff I Did Over Winter Break

1) Baked:
Chewy Chocolate Cookies
Brownies (my friends' favourite)
Clementine Cake! Yummy.

2) Created my first cookie recipe! Cheerio Raisin Bites

3) Finished a couple books

4) Received about a ton of presents. BAKING EQUIPMENT! YIPPEE! I predict many a baking storm coming our way.

5) Went out to eat. A lot. And had so much cake. Urgh...

6) Jump-roped 3000 times in half an hour and near about killed myself the next day at taekwondo class. Did this thing twice and have plans to go out and do it again TODAY. Ow.

7) Turned 18. Omgosh old.

8) Cleaned my desk. It promptly went back to its original state after about a day.

9) Watched probably more than half of the 85 episodes of Family Outing*. Worked out my ab muscles a lot by laughing, chuckling, chortling, and choking.
* Korean TV show

10) Tried to do physics and math. Failed this.

11) Went boxing day shopping and wanted to jump off the escalator. Wouldn't have hurt myself anyway, there were just too many people crawling. all. over. the. mall.
No more of that, I say.

12) Bought some new clothes and shoes. Hate shopping now with a passion.

Quite an eventful two weeks. Most restful I've had in a few years, anyway.
Looking forward to the new year! Yay!

The Thirteenth Tale- Book Review (brief)

I always get annoyed with this kind of book. The kind that start out slow, then suddenly accelerate, and run along quite smoothly for a a while, and then crash and smoulder at the end. Yeah. I didn't even read the last couple of chapters because I was so disappointed. The middle of it was good because there was a lot of mystery and creepy stuff going on. I liked the stories of the past MUCH better than the seemingly whiny voice of Margaret, the girl who sets out to write the biography of a famous dying writer. Really? It just seems too unlikely that a writer as renowned as Vida Winter (fictional character in the book...) would choose a complete stranger to write down her life story. Oh well. Anyway, I liked it when Vida was the one talking, because Margaret just constantly whines about her dead twin. Which sounds bad, but she just goes on and on about it. That's all she cares about, apparently, apart from books. And I wouldn't mind that that much either, except then she goes and SEES her sister's ghost. It was just...too, well, unbelieveable. I'm usually a fan of ghost stories, but here, the ghost story seems forced, and an afterthought. Or maybe I just don't get the 'gothic' genre. Which is what this book is, from what I hear.
I would give this 2.5 out of 5, based solely on its ability to pull me in during Vida Winter's parts. Otherwise, I wouldn't like it at all.
Now, onto bigger and better books!

BBC Book List

I absolutely love book lists. I love that I can go down the list and check off the ones I've read and highlight the one's that pique my interest. But it also makes me feel lazy...I mean, how many years have I used the excuse of 'no time' as a measly excuse for not reading? I guess since whenever I started to be overwhelmed by the amount of studying I had to do. I've noticed that I only ever read books during the summer now, and even then, I tend to be impatient and flip to the back before I get through the first three chapters. BAD HABITS DIE HARD. I'm too impatient with books. I haven't read an entire book through from cover to cover since a very long time ago.

Acting happy and cheerful when really you're just plain FURIOUS inside is the worst kind of feeling in the world. It's a mixture of anger, pettiness, helplessness, and guilt. I'm angry at whatever made me mad in the first place, but also at myself for not being able to either let go of it or find a solution. I feel petty and feel like picking on everything about everyone, and don't feel like doing any favours for anyone. I feel helpless because I know there's a limit to all this, and that sooner or later I ought to stop being angry, but mostly because there's that steel cage of "happy girl" that I can't seem to bust out of. And then there's the guilt; the guilt that comes from letting out a bit of the monster seething underneath the surface to those closest to me; they usually get the brunt of my anger.
And then there are the days when those kind of people are the ones making you feel like a disaster zone inside, and those are the days that everything is intensified.
Today is just one of those days.
Stupid.

More Peanut Butter Cookies...

I definitely wasn't as much of a fan of these cookies as the other ones...these were just too brittle and hard to be classified as good PB cookies. To me, a good PB cookie is soft but a little crunchy from the tiny sugar crystals, and is chock-full of creamy peanut-buttery goodness. My sis described this texture as "suffocating" but I say PSHHH that's what peanut butter's supposed to be like! Well, I'm someone who eats a spoonful of PB in the morning with my banana, so I guess if you don't like PB and its natural texture too much then you won't really like these cookies. I don't know. All I know is that these are PB cookies that TASTE PB.

Oh. Wait a minute. I thought I was still talking about the cookies I posted about earlier today. Whoops!
These cookies here were alright, but rather dry for my taste. I also didn't have any crunchy PB on hand, so that may have made a big difference in the texture of the cookie. The PB I used was also organic and had no sugar added (only thing in there was peanuts!), so if you use some other brand the cookies will probably turn out sweeter.

Erm. I'm not sure which pictures are which...before or after baking?? These didn't really turn brown at all for me.

Peanut Butter Cookies From here

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 egg
½ cup uncooked oats1 tbsp vanilla extract
All you have to do is mix everything together and then spoon them on the cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Except...I decided to just squish the dough up into dense little balls. And I wanted to make them into peanut butter blossom-style cookies. But no one told me that you had to wait until AFTER the cookies were baked and hot to push a chocolate chip into them! So I did this before, when the dough was cold, and I was very puzzled as to why the cookies all crumbled into a big mess as soon as I pushed down on them. Fun stuff. Next time, I might do this with another recipe, preferable one that doesn't use oats since I think that made the dough even crumblier.

Peanut Butter Cookies- Flourless and EASY AS HECK

Alright. These cookies are IT. They have a nice sugary crunch, are soft and creamy like actual PB, and only require 3 ingredients, which makes them sooo easy to mix up and pop into the oven. Took me less than half an hour to have them baking and making the house all lovely-smelling. I love PB cookies...I've gotta figure out how to make a good PB-chocolate cookie soon because I loooove Reese's pieces. Favourite chocolate bar ever. Mmmm.

Here are some pictures:

A Day Like This...

a day like this calls for cookies and and greek yogurt with tons and tons of ooey-gooey honey. greek yogurt is my substitute for ice cream. i figure, if i'm eating something to feel good, why the heck would i eat something that feels good at the moment but horrible after the last smooth, cold, creamy spoonful makes it down my throat? i can get all that from yogurt.
and today? yeah. i need some of that today. something to help me forget what's going on around me, something to help me figure out how to feel. properly. because right now everything's a muddle. a big, huge mess.
not good.
hopefully that half-container of greek yogurt'll help some.

there remains a single-digit number of days...

Am I happy? Yeah, I think so. It's not so much that I don't like it here. I do. There is so much stuff to see and learn and buy (I'm practically a shopaholic now...can't stop buying stuff!). The weather's nice and summery on the most part, Vieux Quebec is amazing, and I've figured out how to use a map and actually get to the places I want. It's just that it just isn't the same without the people and places I love, and 5 weeks of feeling like you're missing out on things at home is just too long. From the first time I heard about this program, I wished it was 3 weeks long instead of 5. Three weeks out of a summer doesn't seem like much, but add two more and...well, it seems a thousand times longer.
I think I sound so spoiled right now. Most kids would be stoked to spend 5 weeks away from parents and stuff like that. Yeah. I thought it'd be so awesome. But you know what? After a couple weeks, all you really want to do is go home, smell some good home-made food, read your favourite book, lie down in your own bed, turn out the light, and sleep for however long you want. And when you wake up, it won't be to a song that makes you cry (only way I can get up and going because it jolts me out of sleep), it won't be at 7-freaking AM on a summer day, you won't have to clean your room before going out the door, you won't have to constantly gasp and check if you have your keys with you, you won't have to wait in line for ages for breakfast while other little brats cut the line...no. You won't have to do that because you're home and it's your place, where you can do whatever the heck you want and you won't get a billet blanc. Those are bad things...get two and you either write an essay in French or go to detention where you get to do pages and pages of French worksheets in complete silence. Or you're grounded. One of those things.
Okay I gotta write more later because the library's closing even though it says they close at 7, not 6:30. I guess these people want to go home too.

Quebec: Half-way

Helloooo blog long time no see! Bonjour from Quebec City.
Everything`s going awesome here. This is probably the first time I`ve had a computer all to myself since 16 days ago. My French vocabulary has been increasing...I think. Well, at least I can talk a bit now instead of just saying «oui» or «non». Oh cool, this keyboard has the French version of quotation marks! Yeah..it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to type @ on this thing. Turns out you have to press ctrl then alt then the 2. Weird.
Although this program is fun and all (we really don`t have much free time...only the weekends and that only means Friday night and Saturday), I`m really starting to miss home. I miss baking A LOT. Darn. All my plans to start baking some stuff from this cookbook I bought are probably gonna go to waste since I`m going to be really busy in August as well. OH wow this computer doesn`t say 1:00 p.m. but 13:00. Cool.
Oh yes. Home. I miss the ocean. Sooo much. I miss sailing and kayaking and having bbqs on the beach and digging for clams. I miss the cool sea breeze. It`s freaking humid all the time here. Even when it rains. And when it rains it`s always a thunderstorm. With raindrops the size of grapes. It`s cool, but really annoying when it`s a Friday night and you`re trying to get out of the dorms and into the actual city.
I think I miss home so much because I`ve never been away from home for more than 13 days. That`s how long my France trip a few years back lasted. So by the 14th day here, I was positively dying. I thought I had to go see the counsellor here, it was that bad. But then it stopped. Today, really. The aching feeling went away. Maybe it`s because I went out on the balcony and jump-roped 2000 times yesterday. I guess it was just stress.
No. No, I don`t think so. Because when my alarm rings in the morning (I set it to a song I really like and that reminds me of home in so many ways), I'm jolted awake. And then I feel like I`m gonna cry, and that really hurts when you`ve just woken up from a really deep sleep (I have no dreams here. I just pass out at midnight, then shock myself awake at 6:30, then go back to sleep till my alarm. The 6:30 thing is because I was late my second day here...got to class an hour late, but it was no biggie really.)
I miss my usual summer activities...which mostly consist of:
-watching tons of kdramas. For entire days sometimes.
-eating ice cream and watermelon and making smoothies at home
-running and swimming and playing badminton with my sis
-going to Costco and Ikea. It`s fun. Really. Especially Costco with its free food.
-writing stuff
-READINGGGG. Well, really, I miss going into the air-conditioned library, staying for an hour to choose and read parts of books, then checking out something like 7 books at the same time.
But I`m getting some of that here too. Finished two books! Read one on the bus to Montreal. It was pretty awesome. Agatha Christie. Some of her books suck, but I liked this one. I got it along with three other books at a thrift store here. All for $0.25. Yeahhhhhh :) I love thrift stores.
-doing math. I can`t believe it. I MISS MATH!
-daycamps! I miss kids.
-shopping without having to carry around everything I buy. Or worrying that something will melt. Because it will.
-GETTING NEW MUSIC. Good grief, I`m dying here with stale music. I mean, it`s still good. But better stuff is getting shoved under my face and I really want to download it but I can`t because I don`t have iTunes or a laptop of my own where I can turn it on. Oh yes, I miss listening to music through actual speakers and not just earphones. Because you can`t really dance to that. Nope. I need speakers.
-And lastly...hanging out with my friends. Or rather (since I don`t do that much regularly anyway), just knowing that I can call them up and meet then anytime. That they`re just around the corner. Unless they`ve gone off on their own traveling adventure, of course.

Oh mannn I miss summer at home. I find that I can't wait till the day I can pack away everything in my room and shut my suitcases for good. Oh SHOOT there's inspection de chambres today. Which means monitors come in and check your room to make sure it`s clean. Oh yeah. They`re also doing bedbug checks today because apparently the 3rd and 4th floors have the little disgusting critters. Oh god. Please not the fifth floor!

Greek Yogurt + Strawberries + Brown Sugar = YUM + a crazy morning

I ate this on the day of the school barbecue. Let's just say I was VERY hyper during homeroom. And my friend had a VERY hard time trying to keep me from dancing around the room. She sighed when I told her I'd had a whole packet of brown sugar with my yogurt that morning. Oh well, I crashed pretty soon after.

Anyway, I love Greek yogurt. It's so creamy and tangy. I love the first scoop out of a fresh container. The first time I tried it I was nervous because I'd been excited about trying something I'd heard about for a long time before, and that hadn't ended too well. That something was buttermilk. I thought it'd taste like butterscotch pudding. Don't ask me why...I suppose I just saw the word "butter" and thought they were the same thing. I WAS SOOO WRONG. I took a big gulp of the stuff. It's an acquired taste. I don't think I managed to choke it down. And I'm not too sure what my mum did with the rest of the carton. Darn. If that had happened this year I would've been able to try out so many recipes! Oh well, I've found substitutes for buttermilk. :) I'm going to try out so many new things this summer!

Wait a minute, how did we come to this? Oh yes. The first scoop of Greek yogurt. It was cool, creamy, delicious. I thought it was ice cream! So yummy. I was hooked.

Then one day as I was browsing Tastespotting, I saw Greek yogurt with strawberries and brown sugar and I thought YESSSSS a new variation to try! I always put honey in my yogurt but I'd gotten a tiny bit sick of it after having it for breakfast for 3 months straight.

Those are socials notes in the background. I am so glad exams are over! 

This was a yummy way to start my day (whoaa that rhymed...), but I think I still prefer the honey variation. The honey just enhances the creamy texture, which I LOVE. The brown sugar gave it a slight crunch factor and was pretty before I mixed it all up, but definitely not as sweet. I'm not sure why though, since I think there was more brown sugar than the amount of honey I usually add...maybe because honey tends to clump up in extreme sweet spots? YUMMMM. Okay. I think maybe I should start having this for dinner as well.

Summer Blues

Yesterday was the last day of school. I can't even believe it. It doesn't seem like the end at all. I didn't even realize that Thursday was the last Day 2 of Grade 11, nor did I realize that yesterday was the last Day 1. I didn't realize that yesterday I had my last Biology and Chemistry classes ever. (two of my favourite courses...NOOO :'(.....) No wonder most of my teachers looked at us kind of sadly. Or maybe that was just my imagination. This year, it was weird. No one except the grads really said much about school ending.

And this is not even funny...I'm freakin' SAD because school ended yesterday. Yes, I don't want to take finals exams, but that's not the biggest thing. I think it's that this year felt so quick and so slow at the same time. I feel like I wasted a lot of time, like I never really got into the flow of things before it all ended.
I'm sad because a lot of my friends are graduating this year. I won't see them in the halls come September, I won't be able to ask them about things, I won't be able to reminisce about the past with them.
I'm sad because I liked my classes this year. I'm sad because I'll have to forget my timetable and relearn a new one. I'm sad because I finally figured out everything, but during the summer I'll be sure to forget. I'm sad because I didn't get to say or do a ton of things that I should have done. I'm sad because we finally found out how to talk, but one of us will forget by September.
I'm sad thinking about yearbooks. I'm sad thinking about the year-end BBQ. I'm sad thinking about how I'll miss yet another awards assembly (whatever, I'd rather help rip 600 hot dogs out of their individually wrapped plastic packages anyway...which is A LOT of unnecessary waste, if you ask me.)
I'm sad that I won't be able to see my friends for five of my precious summer weeks. I'm sad that I won't be able to go sailing or to the beach or go camping or just go to the movies with them.
I'm sad thinking about Grade 12. I don't want high school to end. Next year, this time of year, we'll all be saying goodbye, some forever, and we'll all go our own ways. We may not see each other again for months or years, or ever. That's terrifying. I'm sad that next year, starting from Term 1, everyone will be so busy with university applications (SCARY) that we won't have time for each other (or that's what I'm afraid of anyway). I'm sad that next Term 2, we'll be working like crazy to keep our grades up. And then it'll be over too soon. I saw what happened to the grads this year. First two terms, they were too busy to notice much. Then it was term 3...they never knew what hit them. It was like, WHOOSH and then ZOMG it's June and now it's all over. Oh man. It's gonna hurt.

I would've thought I'd be shooting fireworks out my ears with school over already, but somehow they've been extinguished before they could light.
I think one part of it is that I've been waitingandwaitingandwaiting for summer since September...and then now that it's finally here it's like I've built up all this excitement for it, like what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it and ohhh I have SOOOO much time now it's gonna be great. And then I got accepted into this program to go to Quebec for half the summer, so now I realize there's actually not that much time. So now I guess...I guess I feel a bit like I'm missing out on summer with my friends. Although, don't get me wrong, I AM FREAKING EXCITED FOR QUEBEC. It's my first time travelling alone, budgeting my own food, doing my own laundry, keeping everything organized...basically, it's my first time being away from home for more than two weeks. And back then, it was a homestay. This time it's in university dorms! Oh man, this is going to rock.
But... I MAY not be able to post anything while I'm there since I have to do everything in French, and I may not have a laptop there...which is going to SUCK. I am not happy with my current internet arrangements while in Quebec, which is basically 'no internet'. I can't live without it. Geez, I've never gone five weeks without talking to my friends, even if it's just chatting online for 5 minutes. I cannot. Nope. Not possible. So I'm going to get internet no matter what. Yes. I will. I am determined. And I am hardly ever like this so you can bet your bottom dollar that I am GOING TO GET INTERNET. Just watch me.

Anyway, I hope this sad feeling goes away soon because it's threatening to suffocate me. Maybe I should go and throw myself into my studies and I'll forget everything. Hopefully.

Um. My Spring Break in a Nutshell.

Oh man. I pause in my endless shuffling of papers. This overwhelming feeling of nostalgia...I know it well. It washes over me in waves both painful and calming. Bittersweet.
I'm going through my stacks of past proud projects and thick, bent binders; they go back to Grade 1 and span seven years' worth of work. Some of these things, I've forgotten completely. Others, I recognize with just one glance. And then there are some that need time to conjure up old memories, such as this small, blue certificate with the words 'CONGRATULATIONS Scribbles for 50 nights of reading: Dec 14, 1999' written in curly writing on it. It's from Grade 1, my very first certificate for reading 50 nights in a row. There was some sort of ongoing contest in the Grade 1 classes at my school, I think, and I was so happy to have finally achieved this trophy. I think back to those nights I spent reading word by word with my Dad beside me, saying the unfamiliar words aloud, slowly picking up on the pronunciations and spellings and meanings. I remember how, after a while, I got annoyed with my Dad's accent and told him I'd read it all by myself. Maybe I shouldn't have, but he read way too slow for my liking.
I keep flipping through the piles of papers, looking for things I can maybe throw out. Mum's in her throw-everything-away-so-there's-room-for-new-stuff mode and if I don't get rid of some of my things she's going to go nuts. She gets like this about once every couple months, and especially right before summer...she just bulldozes through the house and shakes out EVERYTHING. She even gets to the stuff I hide away, so there's no point in trying to smuggle some long-lost treasure out of her grasp. She'll find it, and if she thinks we don't need it (and especially if I'm not there to wrest it out of her hand) she'll just dump it in the dreaded white plastic bag. Sometimes I even have to rummage through the garbage to find stuff...but usually these bags of garbage are dry, and only contain my own things, so they're not dirty at all. So she goes and puts the kitchen garbage on top of my stuff, so I won't be able to rummage. Those days are really sad.

------------------------------

This is just something I wrote during Spring Break, when we went to our Gran's place and had to throw out a bunch of stuff because the mice had got into the house. YUCK. We disinfected and vaccuumed and wiped down everything though, so don't worry, it's all clean now. Thank goodness that's over.

Anyway, I just felt like I had to write about that feeling you get when you look at the things that were special to you when you were small, but have forgotten over the years. I hadn't looked at those things for almost a decade (BOY does time fly fast!!), and was overwhelmed by everything that came back to me as soon as I saw them. It was like my mind went "click!" and an onrush of memories came crashing down on my head. You should try it sometime...I think it was a little fun and a little sad, but definitely a pretty good way to spend a rainy day.

Lovely Ginger Cookies

My dad LOVES ginger cookies. They're like, the only type of cookies he eats. So he was very excited when I told him I'd found a butterless recipe on allrecipes.com. (There are some awesome recipes on that site by the way...I found a sweet potato bread recipe on there too, I'll be posting that one later once I get some photos of it.) Anyway, Dad loves ginger. He likes the chewy texture (they're REALLY chewy) of these cookies, and of course he loves that they don't have any butter in them. He can eat as many as he wants without a guilty conscience. Errr..I guess he doesn't want to think about how much sugar's in them. Oh well, you can't have everything, can you? I tried reducing the sugar by a third or so one time, and they tasted a bit bitter...cookies are supposed to be treats, so I'm not gonna try that again!

When I make these, they never last more than two days. So I tend to make them every weekend...they're really easy to make, plus the dough is easy to work with. I think. I haven't made too many types of cookies yet but so far this is my favourite cookie to make. (Plus, they're pretty and smell so nice!)

There's just one thing weird about them though. As you can see in the photos below, the very first time I made them they came out nice and puffy. But after that, every time I made them they came out completely flat and very spread out. A bit chewier, too. I have no idea why. I thought maybe it was because the egg was too cold or something, so the last time I made them I made sure the egg was at room temperature before mixing it in, but they still came out really flat. Dunno why. Maybe I'm mixing the dough too much??

Anyway, here's the recipe!

Butterless Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

1-1/4 cups granulated sugar 1 cup (250mL) (300 mL) granulated sugar
2/3 2/3 cup vegetable o2/ 322/3cup cup(150 mL) (150 mL) vegetable oil
¼ 1/4 cup fancy molasses ¼ 1/4cup cup(50 mL) (50 mL) fancy molasses  (I substituted honey.)
1 egg 1 1egg (make sure it isn’t too cold)  eggs
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 ¾  1-3/4cups cups(425 mL) (425 mL) all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp ground ginger 1 ½ 1-1/2tsp tsp(7 mL) (7 mL) ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon 1 1tsp tsp(5 mL) (5 mL) cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder 1 1tsp tsp(5 mL) (5 mL) baking powder
1 tsp baking soda 1 1tsp tsp(5 mL) (5 mL) baking soda
½ 1/2 tsp salt ½ 1/2tsp tsp(2 mL) (2 mL) salt

More sugar for rolling cookie dough balls before baking

(optional: chopped up crystallized ginger...about 1/2 a cup? Depends on how much ginger you want in the cookie)

Here's the little ball of dough right before it went into the hothot oven...I stuck a piece of crystallized ginger on top and sprinkled on some extra sugar.

Preparation:

1.   Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C) and line a rimless baking sheet with parchment paper (or grease it).

2.   In large bowl, whisk together 1 cup (250 mL) of the sugar, oil, molasses and egg until smooth.

3.   In separate bowl, whisk together flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt; stir into sugar mixture. Add crystallized ginger.

4.   Shape by rounded tablespoonfuls (15 mL) into balls; roll in remaining sugar to coat. Place 2 inches (5 cm) apart on baking sheet. Stick a couple pieces of crystallized ginger on top to make it pretty, along with some extra sugar.

5.   Bake in top and bottom thirds of oven, rotating and switching pans halfway through, until cookies spread out and tops crack, about 12 minutes. Let cool on pans on racks for 10 minutes; transfer to racks and let cool completely. Be careful...they crack easily when they're hot!

(Make-ahead: Layer between waxed paper in airtight container and store for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 1 month.)

Here are the pretty cookies all spread out and stuck to each other...man, I never realized how puffy they were the first time I made them!

Compare the thickness of these two cookies...same recipe but completely different shape and texture. I made them exactly the same way too! So weird...gotta figure out why.

These are quite sweet...they pair really well with a nice hot cup of tea or a cold glass of milk..mmm I think I need to go make them again now...