Gingery Maple Thins

Having tried out a couple of the recipes the issue of Cook's Country featuring the winner and finalists of this year's Christmas cookie recipe contest, and having found them quite good, I decided to check out some of the recipes from previous years.  Once again, I found a bunch of recipes that sounded delicious.  I'll probably end up making a lot of those cookies eventually, and maybe a couple more of them this holiday season, but the one I chose to start with was Gingery Maple Thins.  Given my love of ginger, that one seemed a natural.

These cookies go for big maple and ginger flavor by doubling up on those two ingredients.  The recipe calls for both ground and crystallized ginger, and both maple syrup and maple extract.  That second one is a bit of a problem, because as it turns out, it's hard as heck to find actual maple extract.   As best as we've been able to determine, nobody in Des Moines carries it, so I had to go with imitation maple flavor.

I don't know if genuine maple extract would have made these cookies even better, but as is, they turned out pretty darn good.  The maple flavor is so strong and the ginger so intense that these cookies are more savory and spicy than sweet.  Young kids would probably prefer more standard sorts of cookies; with the intense and complex flavors, these are Christmas Cookies for adults.   Based on taste tests at my workplace, even adults have different reactions to these.  Some people didn't like them very much, but those who did like them liked them a lot. 

That being the case, even though I liked them, I can't really give these cookies a general recommendation.  If you're looking for a slightly different version of a basic Christmas cookie, you should probably skip this one, but if you really like maple and ginger and can appreciate a cookie that is more savory than sweet, you will probably like this quite a bit.