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!

Less than a month left!

I can't believe it. I have a week of classes, dead week, finals week, then I'm home free! Where has this school year gone? Where is 2010 going??? I'm still rockin' the whole "new year's resolution" track.

For my bday (which was last Friday) my lovely family got to come visit for Mom's weekend. I didn't realize it at the time, but my birthday also marks the 1 year bday of this blog! Though it doesn't really count, because I didn't start continually blogging until this year, but it can still count.

Here are a couple photos of what I've been up to for breakfast lately. The battery on my camera is dying so I haven't been taking any photos these past few weeks :o but I'll get those replaced and get rolling again. I really like looking back at my old posts for food inspiration!

Whole wheat mini-bagels with PB, banana, cream cheese, and jam.

It's a face!!

One morning I wanted to go for a nice walk. I instead woke up to this:

Thank God it's almost summer.

Tuesday Today

It's weird starting the week on a Tuesday, but I don't mind. When I woke up to go to chem lab, my arms were so weak from Gravity yesterday! Ahh I love this feeling. Even now I can still feel it! Yay!

Breakfast was a peanut butter and banana sandwich; it held me over through lab and running a couple errands after! The picture only shows the inside, because I had to use the heel of the bread which isn't as pretty to look at.

After lab I went to pic up my passport-sized photos. They are one of the many steps in applying to study abroad, and I got the photo taken yesterday. The photo isn't the greatest- I know haha

I took a couple photos to the Study Abroad Office. There's one more thing off of my list!

Here's the sheet of the four I have left now:

Aaacckkk!! My eyes do look grey though which is a good thing :)

Lunch! I've been able to smell the pumpkin muffins in my room, and not having one yesterday was hard! I planned to have one today with my (conventional :( ) apple. This lunch was surprisingly filling! I think it was the combo of the cream cheese and apple.

I took a bite of apple before remembering to take a picture! whoops

I just got back from yoga and am headed to my second lab for the day in a little bit. Here's the snack I'm packing to tie me through it and Zumba before dinner tonight:

Oatmeal bar! I only have three left. Looks like I'll be baking more in the next couple weeks, once the muffins are gone though.

Applications galore

I get to fill out THREE pain-in-the-rump applications so I can go here:



Snackie Side Note:

I had a muffin with some cream cheese for a small snack! (250 kcal muffin + about 50 cals of cream cheese)

Ahh I'm in love.