Ginger Dogs

Recently Joey and I have been going to a great bakery that is just on the other side of I-35 from our house.  The bakery is called Pablito’s.  It is a family owned business.  They have awesome empanadas, pan dulce, and all kinds of other baked goods as well.  Joey really likes eating baked goods for breakfast, and their prices are so good that it is reasonable to go there frequently.

My favorite item at Pablito’s is a ginger/molasses cookie in the shape of a pig.  The ginger pig is soft, and not very sweet – more like bread than a cookie.  About a week ago, it dawned on me that part of the reason I like the ginger pig so much is that it reminds me of the ginger dog cookies my mom used to make for me.

I got out the Becky’s Kitchen cookbook that mom made for me and Laura back in 2001, which has all of our family recipes.  I looked, and sure enough, the Ginger Dogs recipe was in there!

Here is what my mom wrote about the history of this recipe:

This recipe is from the Natural Baby Food Cookbook, a very trendy topic in the mid-70’s when jars of baby food were filled with preservatives.  LisaDiane was a toddler when I first made these cookies.  Because the gingerbread “man” was too big for her to eat, I used a Scotty dog shaped cookie cutter that Grandma Hope had given me.  It made just the right sized cookie, and they became known as “Ginger Dogs”

Joey had given me a dog-shaped cookie cutter many years ago, and even though it is not a scotty dog, it seemed appropriate.  We had all the ingredients, so I made a batch last night.  Billy lent his cooking expertise to the process.  We actually used weight instead of volume for the butter and the flour, so I have included the volume measurements in parenthesis.  One cup of flour weighs five ounces.  Weighing the flour was so much easier than using a measuring cup!

Here is the recipe:

3/4 cup (6 ounces) melted butter
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup honey
1 cup buttermilk
6 1/2 cups (32.5 ounces) flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ginger
4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon orange extract

Mix melted butter, molasses and honey until smooth.  Stir in buttermilk.
Stir together dry ingredients and add to liquid mixture.
Add orange extract. Mix to a smooth, stiff dough.
Let the dough rest in the fridge for 20 minutes (this step is not in the original recipe, but Billy suggested it, and it worked out well).
Roll out on a lightly floured surface to 1/3 inch.
Cut into shapes and place on an ungreased baking sheet (I used the silpat half sheet that Mom gave Joey for our first anniversary)
Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 mintues.
Cool on racks
Yield = 48 cookies [dogs]

Joey, Billy, and I ate some Ginger Dogs right out of the oven!  They were delicious, just like I remembered.  The guys both felt that they could use more sugar, but I enjoy the bread-like quality these cookies have.  I only baked about 1/4 of the dough.  The rest is in the fridge waiting for me.