Cookie Quest - Moravian Ginger Cookies

When I was a kid, we used to go on school trips to Old Salem in modern day Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Old Salem is a living historic village that replicates the Moravian settlement of the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. My main memories of going to Old Salem are watching the Old Salem kids play with an inflated pig intestine as a ball and eating Moravian ginger cookies. Clearly those memories are not equal. The Moravians figured out how to make these delicious, super-thin, crispy, spicy ginger cookies that are crisper with more of a bite than your typical gingersnap. And they're so good! But I could never figure out how they got them so thin and so perfectly round. I suppose the real answer is 'robots' but that's not the Old Salem answer. Those old-timey ladies must know something I don't.

Old Salem, courtesy of Wikipedia.

 The Moravian Church is a Protestant denomination that began in 1457 in what is now the Czech Republic. Church founder Jan Hus wanted local control of the church (rather than Papal control in Rome) and wanted to return to some Byzantine-era practices including married priests, the use of the vernacular during litergy, as well as the abolition of indulgences and Purgatory. (Here, I've googled it for you.) In the early 1720s, members of the Church fled to Saxony to escape religious persecution, and a few decades later began sending missionaries around the world, including to North America. Missionaries were in New York as early as 1740. They were expelled by 1744, and they made their way south, establishing several colonies in Pennsylvania (including Bethlehem), Georgia, and North Carolina before founding Salem in 1766. Today, the Moravian Church numbers about 825,000 worldwide, and they still have a strong missionary presence. Also, they have these delicious ginger cookies.

Look at all those spices just ready to go!

The Moravians make other cookies, too, of course, but the ginger ones are my favorite. The cookies are all super thin and crispy, and, according to the Old Salem giftshop, were invented in ol' North Carolina. So they're not a Czech thing, I guess.

Rolled out and ready to bake. Please do not notice that they are kind of misshapen.

Matt asked for some ginger cookies a while ago. Specifically, he asked for some Pennsylvania Dutch ginger cookie that comes in an orange bag that I'd never heard of. I said, "Are they anything like Moravian ginger cookies?" But that was about as foreign to him as the Pennsylvania Dutch orange bag cookies were to me (turns out, he was talking about these). So I convinced him that they were probably similar and that we should try my kind instead. Success! I found this recipe in a Cooking Light magazine years ago and had never made it but kept it for just such an occasion. And I figured it was worth a shot. The recipe has you roll out the dough in between a sheet of wax paper and a piece of plastic wrap (I used two pieces of plastic wrap since I'm out of wax paper), and then freeze the rolled out dough for ten minutes before cutting it with a cookie cutter and baking it. It's easy to roll out really thin since the dough is pretty soft and sticky (thanks to the molasses), but it still sticks to the plastic wrap a little and I had a hard time getting them off the plastic wrap in the right shape. But! They taste really good, so that's something.

Cooling.  Check out how thin they are!

The recipe looks like an old one - there are no eggs, very little butter, and the sweetness mostly comes from molasses. The baking soda is clearly a more recent addition (you can read all about that here), but the basics of the recipe are likely unchanged from the Old Salem version. I'm still not sure how they rolled them out so thin in 1766, especially in the hot, humid North Carolina summer, but I guess there are some mysteries that will never be solved.

And a stack of cookies. Yum!

In the end, though, while they taste delicious and are certainly addictive (I think the pepper is a great addition), they are kind of a pain in the neck to make. There's lots of process involved, and the dough gets really sticky the more times you roll it out, to the point where even when I froze it for more than 10 minutes, I couldn't peel it off the saran wrap onto the baking sheet without ruining it. So I made a giant cookie in the end - it's probably less crisp in the middle, but at least I saved a little of my sanity.

The newest addition to my office, not a cookie.

Moravian Ginger Cookies
Cooking Light, 2008

5.6oz all purpose flour (about 1 1/4 cups)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp dry mustard (mustard in a cookie - who knew?)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/3 cup molasses
3 Tbsp butter, softened
2 Tbsp brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour and next eight ingredients (through allspice), stir with a whisk.

Place molasses, butter, and brown sugar in a large bowl (I used a medium one and it worked just fine. I know, I'm a rebel). Beat with a mixer at high speed for 2 minutes. Add flour mixture, beat just til blended, dough will be crumbly. Divide dough into 4 equal portions.

Place each portion on a sheet of wax paper (or saran wrap or parchment paper), cover with plastic wrap. Roll each portion to a 1/8-inch thickness. Freeze 10 minutes; remove plastic wrap. Cut with a 2 1/2-inch cookie cutter. Place cookies on greased baking sheet, bake for 6 minutes or until edges of cookies are browned. Remove from oven, let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then remove to cool on wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough. Makes about 3 dozen, unless you give up and make a giant cookie at the end.