fresh ginger in Gingerbread Cookies ?
Can fresh ginger be sustituted for powdered in gingerbread cookies ? Is is a good idea or not so good ? and how would you treat the differant product in terms of quantity ? less because it might be stronger or more because it has a water content ???/
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5 Comments:
For a variety of reasons, a direct substitution of fresh ginger for dry would give probably give different results than the original recipe. Good quality, carefully stored, dry ginger would be more concentrated than fresh, so you'd need more of the latter, if you're doing a substitution (if your dry ginger has been around for a long time, though, it may be pretty weakly scented). The water content might be an issue, depending on how much you used; I'd be more inclined to use the ginger juice to replace an equal amount of the liquid in the recipe, possibly keeping part of the dry ginger in. I'm not certain that the baking time for most cookies would be long enough to cook the grated or minced fresh ginger to an attractive texture.
mongoose at 2:08PM on 12/03/08
I add finely grated fresh ginger to my cookies all the time. If you are worried about them being too strong, scale back on the powdered, which is, per content, more potent. I would only worry about the water content if you are adding a lot of ginger-- if so, just reduce the milk or oil by maybe at most a tablespoon, depending on how much you add.
Laurel E at 4:03PM on 12/03/08
I have never, ever added fresh ginger to gingerbread cookies. I use Nick Malgeri's recipe from How To Bake and have multiplied it by enough to get 455 cookies out of it. It's the best, most fool proof recipe I've ever used.
I generally try to sub fresh- or freshly-ground-whole-whatever when powdered is called for in a recipe but the ginger in gingerbread cookies are my one exception.
therealchiffonade at 5:13PM on 12/03/08
hmm -- i don't know about substituting rules, but you definitely can make gingerbread with fresh ginger. nigella's gingerbread (the cake style, not cookies) recipe is my boyfriend's all time favorite item that i bake and it uses grated fresh ginger in place of dried.
megannesta at 7:04PM on 12/03/08
I've always added fresh ginger to my ginger cookies, it adds a nice bit of gingery heat which I love. I usually use both powdered and fresh but I like a lot of spice in general. Just make sure you grate it very finely so its not hunks of ginger, I use my micro plane zester and it works a treat. Very nice in both texture and taste I highly recommend it. As far as substitution goes I'm not sure since I use both but I add a couple of teaspoons to each batch.
mia_pia at 10:16PM on 12/03/08