Today our kitchen welcomes Peggy Ehrhart, with a yummy recipe and a 3-book giveaway for DEATH OF A KNIT WIT. Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing!
Peggy Ehrhart: They are what they eat, and the characters in my Knit & Nibble mysteries do a lot of eating . . . and cooking. Members of the Knit & Nibble knitting club take turns hosting the group, and each week’s host serves a dessert when the group breaks for refreshments. It’s fun to make the desserts reflect the personalities of the people who serve them.
Nell Bascomb is in her eighties. She’s the oldest member of the group and a devotee of simple, traditional desserts. She also disapproves of excessive sugar and is something of an anti-sugar crusader. In Death of a Knit Wit, Nell bakes gingerbread when the group meets at her house.
Gingerbread recipes are not hard to find, so for my visit to Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen I thought I’d invent something inspired by gingerbread but a little more creative. My Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies complement the spicy but not too sweet effect of gingerbread with a delicious butter and cream cheese filling similar to the one I use when I make carrot cake.
The recipe makes about 20 sandwich cookies (40 single cookies).
You won’t need your electric mixer for the cookies but you will need it for the filling.
Ingredients for the cookies:
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp butter or margarine
1 tbsp milk or plain yogurt
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
½ tsp ground ginger
Ingredients for the filling:
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick), softened
1-1/2 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar
Sift flour, salt, and spices into a large bowl.
Heat molasses in a small saucepan until it starts to boil. Add the butter or margarine, the sugar, and the milk or yogurt and stir to blend.
Add the molasses mixture to the flour mixture and stir with a large spoon. The dough will be stiff.
Butter two large cookie sheets, at least 12” x 18”. (You can use three or four smaller ones instead, or bake the cookies in two batches.)
Carve off teaspoon-sized bits of dough.
With your hands, roll them into ovals.
Pat them flat, not thicker than 1/8 of an inch. The dough is surprisingly un-sticky—working with it is rather like working with Play-Doh. Place the cookies on the cookie sheets, about twenty per sheet, not too close together—though they don’t spread out too much.
Bake them at 350 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes. They cook very fast.
Let them cool on the cookie sheets and then carefully remove them with a spatula.
While they are cooling, make the filling.
Put the butter and cream cheese in a large bowl.
Using your electric mixer, blend them until they are smooth and then blend in the powdered sugar.
When the cookies are cool, assemble your sandwiches. Turn half the cookies on their backs and spread filling on their undersides.
Top each spread cookie with a plain cookie.
Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for one of 3 copies of Peggy's book!
Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor who currently writes the Knit & Nibble mystery series for Kensington. The eighth book in the series, Death of a Knit Wit, has just been released. Her amateur sleuth, Pamela Paterson, is the founder of the Knit & Nibble knitting club, and Peggy herself is a devoted crafter. Visit her at www.PeggyEhrhart.com
