Not your average cookie...

While I was making the crackerbread from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book yesterday, a cookie recipe caught my eye and I happened to already have everything on hand. The dough needed to chill overnight, so I went ahead and made it last night so we could have some fresh cookies to snack on today.

I've mentioned before that Jeff likes rye bread, so I knew I had to make these Molasses-Rye Snaps and see what he thought. What also piqued my interest about these cookies was the use of only spelt and rye flour - no all-purpose or whole wheat. These cookies may not be for everyone as they are quite spicy - I don't mean "hot" when I say that though. Besides cinnamon and allspice, there is a double shot of ginger in the recipe. Along with ground ginger, sweet crystallized ginger brings an addicting bite. You don't want big chunky pieces though, so instead of dealing with the sticky factor of trying to mince it, a food processor easily took care of the job.

Now, if you tried to process the crystallized ginger alone, it would probably get quite gummy - to prevent that, we added half of the spelt flour to it before processing. It kept everything separate and the processor had no problem getting the ginger very fine. In these dark cookies, just two tablespoons of molasses really brought out the hearty rye flavor with out any bitterness. I enjoyed the flavor, but the texture is what sold me - the outer ring of the cookie is crisp, but if you tried to bend them, they wouldn't break. They have just enough give to them which adds a wicked, almost on the verge of sticky, chew to them. These are not puny either - with only about 50 calories per cookie, I can't wait to pair them with a scoop of plain vanilla bean ice cream to make a more adult ice cream sandwich.

Recipes
Molasses-Rye Snaps