Chocolate and Toffee Stuffed Ginger Cookies

A concert hall close to where I live, the Kennedy Center, offers free performances every weekday at six.  I have only gone to a few, but they have all been excellent.  This summer I went to a South Korean pop concert. 

Tonight I went to a concert entitled, A Very Tuba Christmas.  It was fantastic.  With such a phenomenal name, how could it not be wonderful?

They had a little over 350 tuba players.  I have never heard 350 tuba players perform simultaneously before, and I doubt you have either.  It's a singular experience.

It was my first time going, but it is an annual event.  They have been doing a tuba Christmas performance for twenty years.  I'm doing many wonderful Christmas things this year, including going to the Nutcracker.  It will be my first time seeing a professional performance of the Nutcracker.  

These cookies are also pretty Christmasy.  They're ginger cookies, and ginger, like eggnog and peppermint, are Christmas flavors.  I have learned this from reading food blogs.  This recipe came from allrecipes, but I added Hersey's almond and toffee nuggets.  I used dark chocolate nuggets.

The ingredients are almond and toffee dark chocolate nuggets, 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon water, 1/4 cup molasses, and sugar for coating the cookie dough balls.  The recipe says about 2 tablespoons of sugar.

I began by adding all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.  The dry ingredients are flour, ginger, soda, cinnamon, and salt.  I whisked these ingredients together.

In another bowl, I beat the sugar and butter together.

I added an egg once the butter and sugar was nice and pale.  It must be nice.  Mean butter and sugar just won't do.

I added the molasses and water to the buttery egg.

It looked a little curdled.  I gradually added the flour, and then it looked normal.

I grabbed a gob of dough, a little less than a tablespoon, and flattened it a bit. I placed half of a piece of chocolate in the center.

I grabbed a smalled gob of dough and placed it on top of the chocolate to make a cookie dough chocolate sandwich. Yum!

I rolled the dough around the chocolate until a ball was formed.  I rolled the cookie in sugar.  I had some red sugar leftover from another cookie recipe I made, but white sugar is perfect.

I placed the cookie dough bits onto a baking sheet.  The cookies should be about 2 inches away from each other.  These raw cookies are not a social bunch; they need their space.  Once the pan was full, I baked the cookies for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

 This ginger cookie recipe was fantastic.  The cookies were soft and aromatic.  The ginger and molasses create a sweet and exotic flavor.

In my mind, ginger cookies are the quintessential Christmas cookie.  This recipe makes a fantastic cookie, and the dark chocolate with toffee add a sweetness and bitterness that complement the ginger cookie well.  This is now my go-to ginger cookie recipe!