Gingered Carrot Cookies

For this weeks BWD: Baking with Dorie Challenge, it was Grapefruit's pick and she decided on Gingered Carrot Cookies on Page 162 in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my home to yours . 

When Grapefruit emailed me a while back about her pick I have to honestly admit that I wasn't thrilled. Ginger isn't my most favorite spice and after reading through the recipe and finding that it had raisins in it as well,  I decided right there and then I was not going to like this cookie. In fact I told my husband this one was going to be all his to take to work.

I guess I owe Grapefruit and Dorie Greenspan a giant apology. These cookies were anything but ordinary and they are in fact out of this world. My oldest child who hates raisins was scarfing these cookies down without complaint and needless to say my husband didn't get to take any of them to work.

The cookies are almost like a mini carrot cake minus most of the normal carrot cake spices. It only calls for ginger and a little bit of freshly grated nutmeg, but it is packed full of flavor with grated carrots (I shredded them), coconut, toasted pecans and raisins. My husband kept saying it was the most perfect mix of flavors that keeps you wanting more and more.

The cookie dough is pretty simple with butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and a flour mixture, but by adding all these other wonderful ingredients it takes the cookie from ordinary to extraordinary. One thing I was really glad to have with this cookie is my trusty Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Without it I think you either need some serious muscles or hope your motor won't burn out on a little hand mixer as the dough gets really dense towards the end.

Baking time for these cookies was spot on for me and as always, Dorie's instructions are precise and easy to follow. Fresh out of the oven the cookie had a nice crunch with a soft interior probably due to minimal spreading during baking, but even the next day which turned the cookie more "chewy" overall it was still good. This cookie now has a permanent spot in my cookie file and will be made many more times in the future. So thank you Grapefruit for picking this cookie and thank you Dorie for inventing it. This cookie has easily made it into my top 20 all time favorite cookies.

Check out Grapefruit's page for the recipe and Elizabeth's page to see what they thought about this cookie and what new and interesting things they came up with.

For our next BWD in two weeks (the 12th of April) it is Grapefruit's pick yet again with Lots-of-Ways Banana Cake on Page 204 and 205. So if any of this has peeked your interest and you want to join the fun with us next time, just shoot me or Grapefruit an email and we'd be more than happy to have you.