Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald

It simply can't be that a year has passed since we last posted to our Cooking (and Contemplating) New England blog! We've been cooking up a storm, mind you, just not blogging about it. We're at work on a cookbook--a collection of historic recipes that we've made at home--which leaves little time for blogging, or much else. But our blog tells us it feels neglected . . . so here's something we made recently and just love. We hope this keeps our blog readers happy (and thank you, dear readers) until we can devote more time to this medium!

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Don't Make It Snappy
In the middle of the nineteenth century (before chocolate invaded and displaced all other sweet flavorings), Americans were partial to the zippy combination of ginger and molasses, which they used as the basis for untold varieties of treats. The spicy-sweet flavor duo lent itself to both "soft" gingerbread (like modern shortbread) and denser forms of hand-held treats. Toward the solid end of the spectrum were ginger snaps and a kind of ginger cookie that, sadly and inexplicably, has fallen by the wayside—ginger nuts. Our goal today is to entice you to bake up a batch of these long-forgotten Victorian chews so that you too can experience the deep, glorious taste of a really gingery cookie. Read More