Crackly new year

Second post of the year, and it's another Wow.  As in, wow, I can't believe Tuesdays with Dorie has been going for three years!  And even more crazy is the fact that I've been a part of it since week seven.  I've skipped a few things along the way (though not that many), but have made the vast majority of the recipes chosen so far.  I didn't do so well in December, though, and I'm trying to get off to a better start for the new year.  To kick off the month and the year, Laurie and Julie picked our recipe, Midnight Crackles (in celebration of the new year starting at midnight =) ).

I decided to just make half the recipe, since we're still trying to finish off the last of the Christmas cookies.  The cookie dough is pretty straightforward to mix up.  The only change I made was to skip the cinnamon and cloves in favor of some dried ginger, since I don't like cinnamon with chocolate.   Also, based on the experiences of others, I shortened the chilling time for the dough to just half an hour.  It was still a bit challenging to form the balls of dough, since the dough was a bit crumbly.  But I got it done.  I ended up with 21 cookies, which I baked for 10 minutes.  

The verdict?  I'm still trying to decide on these. I mean, they're good.  (They have lots of chocolate, after all.)  But they're not my favorite chocolate cookie.  Right now I think that title goes to the Alice Medrich chocolate chunk cookies (one variation of which you can see here).  They were still eagerly eaten at work, though. =)   I also couldn't taste the ginger at all.  If I try these again, I'll probably add some finely chopped crystallized ginger to the dough.

If you'd like to give these a try, the recipe can be found on the Tuesdays with Dorie site.  To see what everyone else thought of these, check out this week's Links.   Happy anniversary, everyone!