T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

I’ve been feeling more domestic lately so I’m going to start something new with my blog in addition to reviews.  I’m going to bake!  And this week, I’m going to be doing it with my favorite vegetarian bunny lover, Helen.  What a good way to commence the new “recipe” T.O.bites feature than by embracing the upcoming holiday season with none other than gingerbread cookies.  Actually, I’m a bit of a scrooge, but gingerbread is still associated with Christmas in my head somehow.  Today also happened to be the Toronto Santa Claus parade.. what joy!  (Sarcasm never goes over well on the internet).

just about ready to go in the oven

The ingenious thing about this recipe is the fact that all you’ve got to do is replace the allspice  with a teaspoon of chai tea cut open from your generic supermarket bought teabag.  I was a little hesitant upon reading this as I was expecting it to be tea leaves, but nope, it’s just a blend of dried spices in that tea bag.  The cookies turned out to be quite awesome.  Infact, if I had the manpower, I would propose that most bakeries try adding chai tea to their old gingerbread recipes.

Chai Gingerbread Cookies
(stolen from the November 2009 issue of Chatelaine)

Ingredients:

2 and 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 tsp of ground ginger
1 and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1 and 1/2 tsp of salt
1 and 1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 tbsp of chai tea (split open the teabag and measure)
3/4 of a cup of brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 of a cup of fancy molasses

1. In a large bowl, using a fork, stir flour with spices and baking soda.

2. In a medium bowl beat butter with sugar for about 2 minutes.  Beat in the egg then beat in the molasses.

3. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the molasses mixture into it.

4. Stir until most of the molasses is absorbed.  Gently knead the dough until it is an even colour.

5.  Divide the mixture into 4 portions by hand.  Roll each into a ball then flatten slightly into a disc shape.

6.  Wrap seperately with cling wrap and refrigerate until firm (about 30-50 minutes).  You can keep this in your fridge for about a week if need be.

7.  When ready to start baking, preheat your oven to 350F/180C and remove the dough from the fridge.

8. Let dough stand for a bit until it is soft enough to roll.  Lightly grease up a baking sheet in the meantime.

9. Place a disc of dough inbetween 2 sheets of wax paper and roll dough.  Make sure it is no thicker than 1/4 of an inch (half of a cm).  Cut out the shapes with a cookie cutter and place them on the baking sheed about an inch apart.

10.  Make in the centre of the oven until the edges begin to darken.  About 8 minutes if you want soft cookies and 10 minutes if you want hard ones.

11.  Feel free to make some icing by adding about 1 teaspoon of water to half a cup of icing sugar.  The best way to decorate the cookies is to put the prepared icing mixture in a ziplock bag and then cut a small hole at one of the corners to squeeze the icing out of.