It All Starts With Chocolate Gingersnaps

I urge myself to start this blog for a very long time. I'm making photos of almost everything that comes out of my oven but when it comes to writing there's always a good reason to put it off until later. But today is the great start-my-blog day. In fact it's not only my blog. The initiator was Ivan but he always says „You are the writer in the family“. So here I am – writing while he... actually he is making some sourdough bread /but for this I'll write another time/.

Let us present ourselves. We are Silvia and Ivan, we are living in Varna, Bulgaria and we are baking addicted :) You are welcome to peek in our kitchen whenever you want!


The reason I've started to write exactly today was because I've found an indian food store in the town. I've got so overexcited about this that I needed to share it with someone that whould understand me. We were in the Greek quarter looking for the shop for ropes and chains /my father-in-law needed a stainless steel rope for his yard well/ but instead of the rope shop there was an indian food shop. I wouldn't have even noticed it otherwise but I was inside asking where is the other shop when I saw the products – the same stuff I was buying from the Indian quarter in Paris while visiting my sister. The same stuff I was squeezing into my extremely big suitcase and then dragging them all the way to Bulgaria. Usually I'm not taking many clothes bacause I need space in the suitcase, space for spices, herbs, sugar, chocolate, cheese, different types of oils and butters and many many other edible ingredients. Afterwards all my tiny muscles hurt because of all the dragging of my precious goods. Sometimes I wonder what will happen if someone of the customs officers take a look at my suitcase. Could they catch me for food smuggling.


Now you understand why I get so happy of the simple fact that there is an Indian grocery near me. It's not that I won't overfill my suitcase with interesting ingredients wherever I go, but now I have some of them under my nose.

So, the fact that I've entered the shop means that my bag was full on my way out. One of the things I bought was a jaggery - unrefined non-centrifugal sugar. And on this occasion I made these Chocolate Gingersnaps.

Jaggery has a very specific flavour. It's not so sweet as sugar. For me it resembles more to honey, but not quite. You should try it. It's really really good. And it makes cookies taste really different.
Here I've used white granulated sugar instead of brown just because I wanted to have the taste of jaggery as a dominant. And it was successfull. The cookies are crunchy and hard, just like I like them.

 

Chocolate Gingersnaps Recipe:

• 150 gr all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting;
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder;
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger;
• ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg;
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder;
• ¼ teaspoon salt;
• 60 gr butter;
• 50 gr jaggery;
• 50 gr granulated sugar;
• 1 large egg white, at room temperature.

Mix the flour, cocoa powder, ginger, nutmeg, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl until uniform, set aside.

Beat the butter, sugar and jaggery in a large bowl until creamy and fluffy /about 2 minutes at a medium speed/. Beat in the egg white. Remove the beaters and stir in the prepared flour mixture with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Gather the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic or put it in a tightly closed box and place it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.


Preheat the oven to 160ºC. Prepare a silicon pad. Dust a clean, dry work surface with flour. Dust the rolling pin and roll the dough out until 4-5mm thick. Using a cookie cutter cut out the cookies and transfer them to the silicon pad. Gather the scraps and repeat. Bake approximately for 10 minutes, or until the cookies are firm and crisp.