I am not a great baker nor a great cook, but my 7-year-old daughter loves to help me in the kitchen. In an effort to spend quality time and fill her love tank, we are baking more together. This week we made gingersnap double doozies with orange cream cheese icing. The original recipe is from recipegirl.com and was recommended by a friend. She calls them Gingersnap Sandwiches but we called them Gingersnap Double Doozies because they reminded my daughter of the cookie sandwiches you get at the cookie cake stores! YUM!
Spoiler alert: They were delicious!
Cookie Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup molasses**
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar, for rolling
**I couldn’t find molasses in my store so I used maple syrup that I had in my pantry. Researching after the fact I found that this is fine to do but maple syrup is sweeter than molasses so you may lessen the amount used. We didn’t. The cookies were great.
Filling Ingredients:
- 1¾ cups powdered sugar, plus more as needed
- 4 ounces (1/2 cup) cream cheese, at room temperature
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest**
- 1 teaspoon orange juice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
**Zesting the orange peel was not really fun. I used a clementine because that was what we had. No, I did not measure it out. I just did a good chunk. It really does add in the flavor and give the icing a little more texture. Worth the extra work!
Before You Begin Cooking:
Go ahead and pull out your butter and cream cheese a few hours before. They need to be room temperature. If you are like me you can pull out all the ingredients to take a cute picture for your blog but forget the sugar.
We were able to whip up the icing while we were waiting for the cookies to cook.
Tip for cooking with kids: There will be a mess. Hopefully not food fight level mess but go ahead and resign yourself to the fact that these beautiful little people make monumental messes and check your temper at the door. Make it a sweet memorable time.
To Mix The Gingersnap Cookies:
We followed the directions from the original recipe except we substituted molasses for maple syrup.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, cloves, and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to combine the butter, 1/2 cup white sugar, and brown sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. I am not sure how fluffy but ours was mixed well.
- Add the maple syrup, egg, and vanilla, and beat at medium-high until mixed. This should not take too long. Reduce the speed to low; add the flour mixture a little at a time and mix until well. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes or up to 1 day. We covered ours with cling wrap and left it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Be sure to preheat your oven to 350 degrees so it is ready when you get ready to bake them.
- Place 1/2 cup white sugar in a shallow bowl. Shape the dough into 1-inch balls; roll in the sugar to coat. My daughter thought this was super fun. Arrange the cookies about 2 inches apart on 2 ungreased baking sheets. We used parchment paper instead.
- I thought this next part would be hard but it was just messy. Using the bottom of a glass that has been lightly greased, then dipped in sugar, flatten the dough into ¼-inch-thick disks. I think I went wrong because I used the side of a juice glass to flatten them and kept spraying it with spray oil. It worked but was pretty messy for me.
- Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, or until firm. Remove from the oven and immediately transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. ( We don’t have a cooling rack. They were fine cooling where they were!)
To Make The Orange Cream Cheese Icing:
- In a medium bowl, combine all of the filling ingredients; mix until smooth, adding more powdered sugar as needed (the filling should have the consistency of very thick frosting).
- With a small spatula, frost the bottoms of half the cookies (about 1 teaspoon of filling each); top with the remaining cookies (so the bottom sides are together) to make sandwich cookies. This is where the Double Doozie name comes in. Do you know those cookie sandwiches at the big cookie cake stores? These are like those but with Christmas flavors! I would add a little more icing than the recipe calls for.
A Wonderful Christmas Cookie and Memory
We made exactly 25 cookies from one batch. We had enough icing left over to satisfy my sugar craving too. The Gingersnaps were really really good! They are the kind of cookie that you can’t really eat more than 1 maybe 2 and then you have hit your sugar limit. They would be delicious with coffee. We kept ours in the fridge and they lasted about 3 days. These paired with a nice bag of coffee would be a great Christmas gift for a coworker or neighbor! I would definitely make them again next year.
My daughter was very proud of herself for baking these. She said “Ya know mom we are not great bakers. We are not the worst but not the best. We are medium bakers!”
If I am cooking with my kids, I’m happy with being a “medium” baker any day!
