How To Turn Forty

Yesterday, my friend Dawn turned 40. I made these cookies for her.

I also made these cookies in September for Susan's 30th birthday, and mailed them to her in Boston. In case you are wondering, they do travel well (that's actually true, right, Suz?) and they have enough moisture content to keep them fresh for awhile. So, anyway, it just so happens that this cookie has made its way into two birthday parties. And, really, who really refuses a cookie of any kind at a party? Especially when you can choose your favorite number and gobble it up?

The idea for these cookies comes from the bakery in Lincoln Park called Sweet Mandy B's. This place has stellar cookies and cupcakes and loads of other sugary goodness. Suz and I go there when she's in town, and the molasses cookie is one of her favorites (although she most certainly is impressed by most cookies, which is why I'm friends with her). It's frosted with a dreamy, mile-high, sugar-spasm-inducing layer of frosting. And it's just really good.

Now, Dawn, she is a smart cook, and she has a wise and discerning sweet tooth. I also happen to know that she loves a cookie, too, and she especially loves ginger (she's been known to create some really unbelievable ginger cupcakes in her day), so these cookies seemed a good fit for 40.

You can put numbers on them or not. I used cream cheese icing, but you could use any kind you want. This cookie is sort of a fall/winter cookie, given the molasses and all, but Sweet Mandy B's serves them year-round, so you can, too!

Ginger-Molasses-Chocolate Cookies
based really loosely on a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, and based not at all on the actual SMB recipe (just based on how I think they taste)

4 1/2 C AP flour
4 t ground ginger
2 t baking soda
3 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground cloves
1 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 C unsalted butter, softened
2 C sugar
2 eggs
3/4 C molasses (if you feel nervous about molasses, you can reduce this to 1/2 C)
1 or 2 C semisweet chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
1/2 C finely chopped crystallized ginger

In a medium bowl, mix first seven ingredients. Stir in the chocolate and crystallized ginger bits. In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy. (You can use an electric hand mixer or you can put it in the stand mixer, if you have one.) Add sugar and beat until combined. Add eggs and molasses and beat, scraping down sides. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. Stir in the rest by hand.

Shape dough into balls. You can make them smallish by rolling 1" balls, or you can make bigger cookies by rolling 2" balls. For this project, my dough balls were about 1 1/2". (At this point, you can roll the balls in coarse sugar, if you like. This will make them look really pretty and they will glisten in the winter sun. I skip this step if I am adding icing. Also, consider perhaps reducing the amount of sugar in the cookies by 1/3 C if you are going to roll them in sugar, unless you like things really, really sugary.)

Bake in a 350F oven for about 11 minutes for smaller cookies, 13 minutes for larger ones. You'll be looking for cracked, puffy tops. Cool on the cookie sheet for 2 or 3 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack (or to the surface of your red table) to cool completely.

Once they are cool, you can decorate them with fancy birthday numbers. I used a quart-size ziploc bag, one corner snipped, with the smallest pastry tip that I had, but I think you could just use only the bag, and snip off the tiniest little bit in a corner. Or, if you, unlike me, can actually find your pastry bag in all your kitchen cabinets of stuff, then you can use that.

This recipe makes enough 2 1/2" cookies for a 30 year old or a 40 year old. If you make them a little smaller, though, you could easily make enough for a 50-, 60-, or a 70-year old. If someone is turning 80 or 90 or 100, I'd suggest making 2 batches just to be on the safe side. See, the good thing about getting older is that you get to have more cookies.