Ginger Crinkle Cookies

Memorial Day weekend and the salmon are starting to run. The early kings — chinook — are in the rivers, the first scouts of the summer runs that will flood Alaska with fish from now through September. Everyone is talking about fish. The grocery stores have signs: COPPER RIVER SOCKEYE, FRESH, $24.99/LB. Pete from the ER already has a freezer full from his uncle. The state is organizing itself around salmon the way it organizes itself around darkness in winter: totally, communally, with the understanding that the salmon won't wait and neither should you.

Jason and I went fishing. Ship Creek, downtown Anchorage, the same creek where Reynaldo used to fish. I stood on the bank with a rod I didn't know how to use and Jason showed me and the casting was terrible and the fish were not cooperative and it didn't matter because I was standing where my father stood, in waders, in the creek, doing the thing he did, and the doing was the point, not the catching.

We didn't catch anything. We ate lunch on the creek bank — lumpia I'd fried that morning, cold by now but still good, the wrapper slightly soft from the outdoor air but the filling still garlicky and satisfying. Jason ate four. He always eats four. It's his number. Four lumpia, two bowls of sinigang, eight lumpia at the Christmas party. The man has established his quantities and sticks to them with the consistency of a paramedic following protocol.

I wrote about the fishing for the blog — "Casting at Ship Creek: My Father's Fishing Spot" — a post about standing where Reynaldo stood and holding a rod he held and feeling the water that he felt. Not a recipe post. A place post. A post about geography as inheritance, about standing in a creek and feeling your father's ghost in the current. The post was personal and probably too emotional and I published it anyway because the blog is where I am honest and the honesty is what people come for.

The post got a comment from a reader in Anchorage: "I fish Ship Creek too. I'll think of your father next time I cast." Strangers carrying my father. Strangers feeding his memory into the river. The chain extends. The recipes travel. The stories do too. Reynaldo Santos fished Ship Creek. His daughter stands where he stood. A stranger thinks of him. The memorial is not a headstone. The memorial is a creek and a story and a stranger who remembers.

I always associate ginger with my father — the way he kept a knob of it on the counter, the way it showed up in almost everything he made, including the lumpia filling I’ve been frying from his recipe for years. After that afternoon at Ship Creek, standing in his water, eating his food cold on a riverbank, I came home and wanted to bake something warm and sharp and alive. These ginger crinkle cookies are not lumpia, but they carry the same note — that bright, insistent ginger bite that says someone made this with intention. I made a batch and left half on Jason’s doorstep because four lumpia is his number, but when it comes to these cookies, I’ve never seen him count.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min (plus 1 hour chill) | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar, plus 1/3 cup for rolling
1 large egg
1/4 cup unsulfured molasses
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup powdered sugar, for rolling

Instructions

Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and 1 cup granulated sugar together with a hand or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in the egg, molasses, and vanilla extract until fully combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Combine and chill. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until a soft dough forms. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.
Preheat oven. When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll in sugar. Scoop the dough into 1-inch balls. Roll each ball first in the remaining 1/3 cup granulated sugar, then in the powdered sugar, coating generously.
Bake. Place the coated dough balls 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and the tops are crinkled but the centers still look slightly underdone.
Cool. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They will firm up as they cool but remain soft inside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ginger Crinkle Cookies — The Sweetness We Carry to the Water