Crap. I’ve been a bad baker/blogger. It’s been almost a month since my last post. I have baked one batch of cookies in that time, but was too [choose your excuse and insert it here] to post it.

I’ve been wanting to make these ones for a long time, but haven’t been able to find candied ginger. I looked in the spices, in the asian aisle, and in bulk. I finally asked a couple people at Market of Choice and found it in bulk with the dried fruit. D’oh!

Oh, the last ones I made had glaze like this? So what, who cares? 

Step 1: Zest and juice a lemon. 

Check out this sweet all-in-one measuring spoon my coworkers bought me for my birthday! You can just move the slider for different measurements. Thanks, people, and thanks Martha for manufacturing it.

Step 2: Get a slave an assistant to chop up the candied ginger.
 

This was difficult (for Shannon) to chop up because it kept sticking to the knife. I tried some and it was STRONG. I don’t know how this can be called “candy.”

Step 3: Gather all the ingredients: flour, butter, egg, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, lemon zest and juice, vanilla, honey.

Whoops, some of that is for the cookies and some for the glaze. You’ll see later.

Step 4: Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt (not pictured – it got boring)

Step 5: Cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. 

Step 6: Add candied ginger.

*Thud*

Step 7: Add egg and vanilla. Do it simultaneously to be cool. 

Step 8: Add flour mixture. Beat until combined. 

Step 9: Divide dough in half and form disks. Refrigerate for an hour. 

The dough was really sticky/wet. I was clearly worried.

You may notice the sweet tea vodka. We mixed it with the rest of the lemon juice. Yum.

Step 10: Roll the dough and cut out 2-inch circles. 

I went to Target and TJ Maxx and couldn’t find a damn circle cookie cutter. They only had weird shapes. I decided to use a glass. Same thing, right?

Step 11: Forget to put flour down on the next disk and see what happens.

The whole thing stuck to the mat. It scooped up nicely, though.

Step 12: Bake. Meanwhile…

Step 13: Gather ingredients for glaze: water, lemon juice, lemon zest, honey, powdered sugar. 

Step 14: Mix it up until it magically melts into glazy deliciousness. 

Step 15: Drizzle glaze over cooled cookies. 

I decided to put it into a bag and glaze them that way. I thought it’d be easier than drizzling with a spoon or something. She wasn’t specific.

Looking good so far!

Oh, what’s that, off-brand zip bag? You can’t stay closed? You’re going to expl…oh crap.

Well…at least the first set turned out okay.

Yeah, so there was this.

Look at these good ones! So exciting!

These ones were “soaked” in order to enrich the tart notes of the glaze. /BS

Link to original recipe

Yields: 72
I got:  38

Start time: 9:30
End time: 12:45 (3 hours, 15 mins)
Martha’s estimated time: 2 hours, 50 minutes

What did I learn?

• Plastic Ziploc bags don’t work well with icing.
• Having an assistant to take photos of two-handed mishaps is essential.
• Circle cookie cutters are hard to find.

What do I need to learn? 

• How do you properly tie off an icing bag?
• Why did I get so few cookies compared to her estimate?

It’s been 2 weeks since I made these, so I can report that I found circle cookie cutters. Where? you ask. The Martha Stewart Collection at Macy’s. DUH. God, Nate, you are so stupid! 

Yo, peeps who ate some, please comment. And yo, everyone else, please don’t hate me for my lack of posts. You’re going to get another one REAL SOON. I’m baking as I type. Not a lie.