Bunny food?

Oops, just realized that it's Tuesday evening and I still haven't finished this post!  I guess that's kind of an odd way to "start" a post, but that's because I seldom write a post in order from start to finish.  Especially if I'm having a hard time deciding what to write, I'll start at the bottom, with the verdict.  And usually my baking notes are pretty straightforward to type up.  So all I had left after this morning was this first section.  I've been trying most of the day to come up with something interesting to put up here, but no luck.  So I guess I'll just get right to it...  This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina.  Her selection was Gingered Carrot Cookies.

Since there are a lot of other things on my "want to make soon" list, I decided to just make half the recipe.  As with last week's recipe, I changed the add-ins.  No coconut, of course, and no nuts again.  For the carrots, I went with a technique from my favorite carrot cake recipe, and finely chopped them in my food processor, rather than shredding them.  I think it gives a nicer texture than shreds.  Also for texture reasons, I decided to use some zante currants that I had in my pantry, rather than raisins.  I used about 100g of each for my half recipe.

As with most cookies I make, I mixed the dough by hand.  I started off with creaming together the butter and sugars (brown and white).  The recipe says to mix the ginger and nutmeg in with the dry ingredients.  I'm in the middle of rereading Shirley Corriher's Bakewise, and she recommends adding spices to the fat to bring out their flavors more.  So I mixed the ginger and nutmeg into the butter mixture, then added the vanilla.  Most of the ingredients divided easily, but the original recipe calls for just one egg.  To get half, I weighed the whole egg (out of the shell) and got about 50g.  So after beating the egg a bit, I added 25g of it to the butter/sugar mixture.  Next, I mixed in the flour, salt and baking powder, then stirred in the carrots and currants.  I used my #40 scoop to portion the dough, and baked the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  I ended up baking them for 15 minutes.  

I decided to add some icing to the cookies to dress them up a bit.  Several people mentioned the idea of a cream cheese frosting or glaze, and I thought about that.  But I decided to go with something different.  I have a wonderful recipe for pumpkin cookies that has a really yummy butter-based cinnamon icing.  I changed the spice to ginger for these cookies.  I whisked together 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 70g of powdered sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger, a pinch of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon of milk.  The icing hardens somewhat as it cools, so it's best to use it quickly and apply it to cookies that are still warm.

The verdict?  I wasn't sure about how we'd like these, but they were quite tasty!  I did try one plain, but I have to admit, I like them better with the icing.  They have a nice soft texture that works well with the currants and bits of carrots.  I'd like to make them again with walnuts or pecans, though I don't know if B or G would eat them that way.

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe on Natalia's blog.  And to see how everyone else did this week, check out the links for this week's recipe.