Trilogy Edibles: ginger

You may hate her, you may love her but you can’t deny that she helped revolutionize the home food business. Before all the shows, the magazines, the cookbooks…jail…she was just a very good home based caterer. She also knows how to market herself and really, that’s all we food bloggers are endeavoring to do. Ok, well that’s what I’m trying to do.

Now, I love Martha. Not her personally, I don’t know her but I love her recipes and ideas. When I need a recipe for something that I need a guaranteed success, I turn to her. Last week when I was in BJs I found a really awesome cookie cookbook…Martha Stewart Cookies. In this book are 175 different cookie recipes and I’m going to take you through a few.

So that’s Martha Monday?

For the next little while I’m going to alter from Savory Monday to Martha Monday. I enjoy the savory but sweet is more my thing and I do so love a good cookie. It’s also the day of the week that works with Martha. So I’m going through the book, front to back, and testing the ones that catch my attention along the way! I’m going to give you the “skinny” on the cookie!

Our first cookie is Gingersnap Palmiers. Page 51.

What is a Palmier?

From Epicurious.com: Also called palm leaves , this crispy delicacy is puff pastry dough that is sprinkled with granulated sugar, folded and rolled several times, then cut into thin strips. After baking, these golden brown, caramelized pastries are served with coffee or tea or as a dessert accompaniment.

Martha’s version starts out the same but then is dipped in a molasses/brown sugar/ginger sauce and then baked to a caramelized goodness!

So here’s the 411!

Easy/Hard: A relatively simple recipe and since there is no dough to make (unless you are really gung-ho) this hits the easy end of the difficulty spectrum. You just need to start them early if you plan to make them for a reason. These aren’t a cookie you can make and bake in an hour.

Ingredient availability: You should be able to find frozen puff pastry in most grocery stores freezer section.

What I like about this cookie: I didn’t have to make any dough! That’s always a plus, but not-everyone has puff pastry in their freezer. I had previously bought some for my chicken pot-pies. I also love ginger and molasses as flavour, so another plus.

Baking experience: Well I didn’t freeze the cookie as long as the recipe required and so they didn’t stay together completely. The recipe also called for flipping mid-way through the baking experience and that wasn’t going to happen as they started to fall apart as I tried to flip one. So I just lowered the heat and put them back in the oven. Once out of the oven the syrup cooled quickly so I had to peel the cookies off the parchment and break them off.

Taste: The molasses and ginger is very strong, I liked it, but I could see where this wouldn’t be a crowd pleaser but you never know!