Sue Albright, my friend Shanna's mom, made the most awesome gingersnaps in the whole world. Whenever I went over to their house, I'd check the cupboard for the Gingersnap Tupperware. Sue would make them at random times throughout the year, but they Always showed up around Christmas, so in my mind they are "Christmas Cookies". After I got married, I lost touch with my friends from Medford, OR. So much had happened, and I was trying to get used to married life and then we moved even farther away to Seattle, and it seemed like I'd never get back in touch. Anyway, I did eventually call her and as irony works, my friend said, "I just made Gingersnaps and I was thinking about you!" Well, I'd been thinking of her and those cookies for five years! A few months later Shanna and Sue came up this way on their way to Alaska to visit Shanna's brother Wade, and on the way up they called me with a shopping list of things to buy. When they got to the ginger and the cinnamon I squealed, "Are we making cookies???" They laughed and told me to get to work, the dough had to chill for at least four hours before baking, and the baking is the hard part.

Sue and Shanna Albright's Gingersnaps:

¾ Cup Butter Flavored Crisco

2-2 ½ Cups All Purpose Flour (if mixing by hand 2 cups, if using a mixer add up to ½ cup more flour)

½ Cup Sugar ½ Cup Brown Sugar

½ tsp. Salt

¼ Cup Full Flavor Molasses (Dark Molasses)

1lg. egg

2 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. Ground Cloves

1 tsp each Ground Cinnamon and Ground Ginger

½ cup sugar and 1 T cinnamon to cover dough balls in before baking. Mix together, combine flour and baking soda, then I usually cream the sugars into the butter and then add the egg and spices, and add the flour gradually, but in theory you could just dump and run, and then add a little flour at the end if it's too sticky.

Refrigerate at least 4 hours, Roll dough into balls and then roll in a cinnamon and sugar mixture, then bake at 350, using a test cookie to determine average baking time. In my oven it was 11 minutes and 30 seconds per batch. For me it's easier to fuss with the time than the temperature, but you could go up or down 10 degrees if you know your oven bakes hot or cooler.

Cookies can be the test of one's mettle in the kitchen. Chocolate chip and Oatmeal are easy, but if you have a temperamental oven, even those can be a bit of a challenge. Then you find cookies like these that are so good, but a little testy in the baking area. Too much flour and they're too stiff, too little and they don't crack, and then if you bake them a minute too long, they're hard.

Tips for success: When using a stand mixer add the 2 cups of flour and then add 1/8th (no more than ½ a cup) of a cup at a time until the dough has a barely tacky consistency. Chill at least 4 hours before you bake them, overnight is best. Use a cookie dough scoop to get uniform cookie sizes; it's easier to bake them evenly if they're all the same size. Bake a test cookie before you commit to a whole batch, you may need to add more flour and re-chill.

Then, clean up the kitchen, pour yourself a cup of tea and a couple of cookies, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.