Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

Back when the US- Canada exchange rate was far in our favor, my family travelled to Calgary, Alberta a ton. We love the food (Moroccan, Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, the list goes on for days), the city, the hotel, the shopping, and the museums.

One particular museum is the Glenbow. They have a set number of permanent displays, and also have traveling ones as well so there's always something new to see. Plus they have an AMAZING craft room, which I'll do just about anything so I can go in and craft my heart out (see photo below and do not judge- I promise there is a hilarious story about this day!)

Anyhow, one of the biggest draws, other than the craft room of course, was that the cafe in the lobby had these amazing ginger sandwich cookies. They were two HUGE, soft ginger cookies with about an inch of cream cheese frosting in between them. Seriously too good for words. Sometimes if my sister and I didn't want to go look at the museum our parents would remind us of the cookie and we'd be sold.

This is my attempt to recreate these cookies. I didn't really want to make giant cookies with that much frosting, though, because I'd like to not go into a sugar coma after eating them!

Soft Ginger Cookies
Recipe made exactly from here, except I used unsalted butter instead of nasty trans fats margarine.
makes 24 cookies, 12 sandwich cookies (I made 24, and still have a bit of dough leftover!)


2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons white sugar

Preheat oven to 350* F. Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt, and set aside. Beat together sugar and butter until smooth with an electric mixer, then beat in the egg before adding the molasses and water. Continue to beat until all is blended, then slowly add in the dry mixture a little bit at a time.

Grab a "walnut-sized" (???) piece of the dough, form it into a circle, and roll it in the remaining two tbs of sugar, and place on ungreased cookie sheet, and press down to flatten slightly.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, then allow cookies to cool on the pan for 5 minutes before moving them to the cooling rack to finish cooling.

Once all the cookies are baked and cooled, blob a decent-sized portion of cream cheese frosting (recipe below) on the flat side of one cookie, and put another cookie flat side down on top of it to make your sandwiches! Make all the sandwiches, then freeze in a freezer-proof plastic container so they can set up.

You could probably skip the freezing step, but this is how I'm storing them, and it helps prevent the cookies from flattening and all the frosting squishing out the sides.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Original Recipe Here, I just halved it

8 oz cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream together cream cheese and softened butter in electric mixer. Add the vanilla. Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until combined. Allow to chill in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes before you frost the cookies :)

ENJOY!