B E B E R E

Attended a cooky-baking party tonight, the first such gettogether I'd ever been to. It was fun! We all brought dough with us, and then did the final prep work at a girlfriend's house.

I brought my favorite recipe, a modified version of the old Yankee Magazine gingersnap:

(about 40 cookies)

3/4c vegetable shortening
1c sugar, plus extra to roll the cookies in
1 egg
1/4c molasses
2c flour
2t baking soda
1/2t salt
1T ground ginger
1t cinnamon
1t berbere (ethiopian red pepper)
1/2t cloves
1/2t nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 deg F and grease some cookie sheets. Beat together the shortening and 1c of the sugar. Add the egg, and beat until light and fluffy, then add the molasses. Stir and toss together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon, and add to the first mixture, beating until smooth and blended. Gather up bits of the dough and roll them between the palms of your hands into one-inch balls, then roll each ball in sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies have spread and the tops have cracked. Remove from the sheets and cool on a rack.

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Karen made 'spitzbubbi' - linzer style cookies of a butter base, filled with either apricot or raspberry jam. They are lovely, but very very fussy. Very good work for Karen, who has the mindset for them. Wonderful.

LeAnn, of course, brought three different kinds of cookies: almost oreo-like chocolate refrigerator cookies, cardamom cookies, and my favorite of the lot: orange coconut refrigerator confections. These last ones are made from concentrated orange juice reduction combined with crushed 'nilla wafers and powdered sugar. The dough is refrigerated, rolled in balls and coated with dried coconut. The intense, yet subtle flavor sends a frisson throughout my body, makes my toes curl. LeAnn gets a kick out of the fact that I can only describe them as being...well, like your first kiss - not with some teenage goofball, but with an older man who knows what the heck he's doing, for goodness' sake. Yes, they're that good.

Wonderful evening, was nice to spend it with 'the girls.' Would love to do something like this around Christmas - we'd all end up with so much more variety in so much less time.