Booze-Infused Beauties - Fireball

Fireball Ginger Crinkle Cookies

My Grandma taught my sisters and I how to bake. We would all stand together in the kitchen as she instructed us on the specifics. With a grin on her face, she would say, “Now girls, it is important to always measure verrrrrry carefully.” As she said this, she would pour flour straight from the bag into the bowl. We would watch as the flour shook out and landed atop a pile of cocoa and baking soda, confused as all get-out.

I think this knack for precise measurement runs in the family. My dad’s macaroni and cheese recipe uses phrases like “A gurble of Worcestershire sauce” and “a generous glob of butter” and “several shakes of mustard”.  The funny thing is, I know exactly what a gurble amounts to, though I haven’t mastered that recipe quite yet… Damn it! Maybe I don’t know what a gurble is!

Let’s just say cooking is not my forte.

After many years of wondering how the heck my Grandma’s baking always turned out, I have followed her lead and created my own style of baking too. Usually it involves substituting random stuff for ingredients that I am missing but almost always it’s throwing things together in a bowl with a smile on my face! I usually listen to oldies, singing loudly and horribly while creating art through the media of flour, butter and sugar. I think my grandma would be proud.

Today I want to share with you a recipe of my own creation: a small piece of art that uses all of the above ingredients, with the addition of Fireball! ←Yes, the alcohol. 

Warning: There may have been some “careful measuring” done throughout this recipe…particularly with the Fireball. (Note the quantity of fireball remaining in the photo above…heh heh…)

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsps baking soda

1 ½ tsps ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ cup shortening

¼ cup butter

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup molasses (Read below about this step)

1 egg

½ cup icing sugar

FIREBALL! Umm maybe ½ cup?

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

So, most bakers say to mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another bowl and then combine them (And you can totally do that!), but I am lazy and do not like dirtying more than one bowl.

So, I always start with the butter, which should be softened, and then the sugar and all the other wet stuff. For this recipe when I “measured” the molasses I poured the ¼  cup worth of it into a ¾ of a cup and then essentially topped it up with Fireball to what looked like part way. In other words, its ¼ cup molasses mixed with a ¼ cup fireball but I found that when you mix the two together it helps it come out of the measuring cup easier ☺. Then add all the dry stuff and spices, in any order you please.  The dough should be soft and smell (and taste, if you’re not sketched out by raw eggs-I haven’t died yet!) so yummy!!

Grab small handfuls of dough and roll into balls (about 1 inch diameter). Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 9 minutes or so.

When you pull them out they may seem really soft but the trick is to leave them on the pan for quite a while and they will be perfectly chewy on the inside and crunchy on the outside!

While you are waiting for the cookies to cool you can make the glaze. This I did not measure at all. Like, at all. Basically, I put icing sugar in a bowl and mixed fireball into it until it looked glaze-like (kind of like the consistency of syrup). Once the cookies are cool you can pour the glaze over them using a spoon. And Done! Feed them to your friends and family and watch as they attempt to guess the secret ingredient!

Enjoy, and stay tuned for 'Spiced Rum and Eggnog Cupcakes'

-Lizzy