Rosemary and Ginger

I had a couple of new recipes to try yesterday.  I was very excited about this Brown Butter Soda Bread as I've realized that bread is a truly lovely thing to bake.  Bread is so basic but at the same time it is one of the most widely eaten and highly respected foods in the world.  There are so many European countries that think of bread in near religious terms - I want to go to these countries!

Anyways, the soda bread ended up being incredibly messy, the dough was so sticky that it was nearly impossible to knead and I was pretty frustrated with it.  It does taste good but I will probably look for a different recipe next time.

I also made these Ginger Cookies which turned out much better and were ridiculously easy to make.  I've never come across a cookie recipe before where the instructions were "dump all ingredients into a bowl and mix" there was no adding the dry to the wet, no beating the eggs, nothing.  The cookies came out chewy and delicious.

Here's the recipe, which I got from a very cool cookbook called "Potluck: A special collection of more than 400 recipes from families and churches across the country".  This book was a good find - a lot of great recipes.

Vermont Ginger Cookies

2/3 cup cooking oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Throw all of these ingredients into a bowl and mix well with a large spoon.  Pour an additional 1/2 cup of sugar into a small bowl.  Roll dough into teaspoon sized balls and toss in the sugar to coat each cookie.  Place on a parchment covered cookie sheet and press flat with a fork.  Bake at 190 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes.