the elusive, deliciously spicy christmas cookie

it has been three years and still jessica won't divulge the secret of her wonderful christmas cookies. every year i look forward to that little bundle of joy, which smells so happily of spices. in the past few years i've been able to exercise some restraint and bring some of the cookies home to share with my family, but it is true that i am partial to the star-shaped, pink-lemon-icing-adorned hazelnut butter cookies, as well as the gingersnaps. it is a mystery to me how gingersnaps can be so delightfully spicy. eat a jessica-gingersnap, and you are on the road to nose-tingling spiciness; you will exhale spicy CO2 while you eat the cookie.

i suspect that the source of this spice-joy is a liberal amount of ginger. bored at home, i set out to make an equally spicy cookie. while trolling epicurious.com for suitable recipes, i decided that since i was going to make christmas cookies, i might as well make a few different kinds. i settled on three recipes: gingersnaps, oatmeal cookies, and butter cookies.

i ran into trouble when i made the gingersnaps: we only had about a teaspoon of powdered ginger. i sadly replaced it with a combination of ground cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, but wondered how i would provide the mild bite of the jessica-gingersnap. i vaguely remembered something about black pepper in one of the recipes i had discarded during my search, and promptly added a small amount of black pepper.

that small amount of black pepper was enough to assuage my need for bite in my gingersnap, but in hindsight was probably not enough to actually make a difference. the gingersnaps were pretty, certainly, due to my anal tendencies, but were overpowered by the brown sugar. i wish i had added more black pepper, and less sugar. my quest for the jessica-gingersnap will have to be continued at a later time.

on the flip side, the oatmeal cookies (not a jessica-christmas-cookie variety) were quite good. they were supposed to have cardamom in them, which i would have liked to have tried, but we had no cardamom. again, i substituted extra cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and black pepper. i'll have to try the recipe again with cardamom. the cookies were best a couple days after, when the spices had matured a little, and i've always believed that the oatmeal cookie recipe on the back of the oatmeal canister doesn't have enough spices in it.

spicy oatmeal cookies
2 eggs
1 1/2t vanilla
1 to 1 1/2c raisins
1 2/3c flour
1t baking soda
3/4t salt
3/4t ground cardamom (replaced by more cinnamon when i made them)
1 1/2t ground cinnamon
1/2t allspice
1/2t cloves
2 sticks butter
1c dark brown sugar, packed
2 1/4c old-fashioned oats

[1] preheat oven to 350. sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices into a medium bowl.

[2] cream butter, then add sugar and beat until smooth. beat in eggs and vanilla.

[3] stir in flour mixture, then raisins, then oats.

[4] roll dough into small balls (about the size of a half dollar). using moistened fingertips, flatten cookies slightly.

[5] bake until cookies are golden brown, about 10-12 minutes.

[makes about 60 small cookies]