Do you like spices? Well, then you must try the ginger and cocoa cookies, made without adding eggs or yeast to the dough. They are very easy to bake, incredibly delicious, perfect for dipping in milk, enjoying with coffee, or accompanying tea. To preserve the goodness and freshness of these delightful cookies, we can store them in food bags or a tin box. Additionally, ginger and cocoa cookies can be glazed to make them even more appealing or decorative.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
- Portions: 30
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Fall, Winter, and Spring
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup vanilla powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup butter (cold, diced)
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger (heaping)
- 2 cloves (crushed)
- 1 pinch fine salt
- to taste orange zest (grated)
Preparation
Crush the cloves with a meat tenderizer.
In a bowl, sift the flour and cocoa together, then add the powdered sugar, ginger, cloves, and very cold butter. You can replace powdered sugar with granulated sugar.
Quickly mix the dry ingredients with the butter until you get a crumbly, coarse mixture. Add the very cold liquid cream, salt, and grated orange (or lemon) zest. Knead quickly with your hands, without overheating the dough, form a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. You can also prepare it in advance and keep it in the fridge for up to 12 hours. The more the shortcrust dough rests, the better it becomes.
Take the dough out of the fridge, flour a work surface, and roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the cookies into the desired shape and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake the cookies in a preheated oven, in the middle rack, for about 20/22 minutes at 350°F, static oven. The cookies appear much softer when freshly baked than they will be once cooled, so don’t be fooled and don’t extend the baking time.
Extra Idea. If you want to make your ginger and cocoa cookies even more “cheerful,” you can glaze them (only when they are cold) with a mixture of powdered sugar and water. In my case, I used 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and just under 1 teaspoon of water, adding a few drops at a time to avoid ending up with too runny a glaze. I let the glaze sit for about a minute and then decorated the cookies. Before putting them in bags, let the decorative glaze on our ginger and cocoa cookies dry well.
