Graco's ginger cookies, and attempts at a coconut-ginger cookie

This was one of the last cookies. I took a picture of it, and then I ate it.

I'm committing the sin of editing an adored family recipe. Graco's ginger cookies, as originally passed down, call for shortening, which I am no longer comfortable cooking with, on account of it being a tub of industrialized goo. This was really the only recipe I have that requires it, the only reason I have ever kept shortening on hand at all.

Here are the ingredients, which are to be all mixed together, rolled into balls which are then rolled in granulated sugar, and baked for 10 minutes at 350 degrees:

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground cloves
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups flour

A while back, I successfully replaced the shortening with butter; I'd read that butter causes cookies to spread more, so I added a teaspoon of baking powder for more mid-cooking rising action, and chilled the dough before rolling it to make sure it wasn't starting off already half-melted even before it went in the oven. That worked really well.

But then I read that coconut butter is a decent substitute for shortening, too, being solid at room temperature. I immediately started carrying around this flavor in my head of a coconut-ginger cookie, and became addicted before I even began.

It didn't really work out quite like I'd hoped, though it did work really well. I bought a jar of virgin coconut oil, which looked pretty solid in the air conditioned grocery store, but melted down in the summer heat of my kitchen. It was super easy to mix the cookies, and the dough looked the right texture, but starting with a liquid fat instead of a solid one made me concerned about spreading again. So I added the baking powder and chilled the dough for maybe twenty minutes, as I had for the butter version. (I'm not sure if chilling was necessary: the exposed dough got sort of crunchy, and then softened up in my hands immediately as I rolled it. The heat of my hands may have undone all the work of the fridge, though it also may have only undone it on the outside bit, leaving a net loss of heat on the cookie. I do not know, and may try without the fridge next time.)

They were still really fabulous cookies, but you couldn't taste the coconut. I don't know if coconut oil just doesn't have a strong flavor, or if the spices are just overpowering, or what. The spices actually tasted stronger than I remembered from the other variations.

So the results of that experiment are thus: coconut oil is definitely a good substitute for shortening, but it failed to provide enough coconut flavor to live up to the imaginary cookie in my head. Laurel and I talked about it a bit, and came up with a couple of ideas. One was to cut the spices; one was to add coconut extract; one was to use the fat off the top of a can of coconut milk. Laurel had used that in some other recipe and it was super coconutty.

We ate all the cookies, so it was time to make more. I didn't have any extract on hand, but I did have the coconut milk, so that's the experiment I tried. One can of coconut milk did have about 3/4 cup of fat on top.

I report: coconut milk fat does not behave in the same manner as butter, shortening, or coconut oil. It might be more analogous to cream than to butter? The dough was more like drop-cookie dough than ball-cookie dough. Brownie dough, maybe. I added another half cup of flour, but it came nowhere near fixing it. I didn't even try to make them into cookies; they just weren't the right texture at all, and I wouldn't have been able to roll them in sugar. I could be wrong, but I was sure that they would spread into big, thin, crispy cookies, instead of being crunchy for only the outer millimeter, and then chewy the rest of the way through.

I coated a pyrex baking pan (roughly 8x12, I think - not my biggest one, but not my square 9x9 either) in coconut oil, and I dumped all the dough into it to bake as brownies, 350 degrees for 30 minutes. They have indeed baked up, and risen to about twice the original height of the dough, filling the pan; a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. They smell good. They taste OK. I think I accidentally made gingerbread. It doesn't taste like coconut at all, either.

Next time, I'm going to use coconut oil, cut the spices in half, and add a teaspoon or two of coconut extract. I wonder if the molasses are also interfering with the coconut flavor, actually. One of my friends substituted honey for the molasses, once, and it worked out well for him. That might be the iteration after.