So you know the other day I made all those chocolate dipped caramels? And you remember how I mentioned in the post that I’d had to make them twice? Well the first batch I boiled for too long and ended up with hard caramels as apposed to the soft-chewy ones I’d been aiming for. But never fear, one can always make a plan with unwished for ingredients. In my case the extra caramel resulted in two new recipes. This is the first.

This recipe is courtesy of the Women’s Weekly Cookies book. I love their books. The recipes are always simple and you can actually find the ingredients (always a bonus) but perhaps the best part of these books is the conversion pages at the end – helpful like nothing else. I love ginger and I’ve had this preserved ginger sitting in the cupboard brooding for lord knows how many years. (Actually I prefer not to know.) So I got to use both some of the ginger and some of the caramel in the cookies. Stroke of genius if you ask me. I ate about three cookies hot out of the oven. I would have eaten more if I hadn’t started to feel slightly ill. (Too much sugar will do that to you. Or to me anyway.) The recipe makes about 40 cookies, depending on how large you make them. Don’t expect them to last long.

 Caramel Ginger Cookies
Adapted From Women’s Weekly Cookies
2 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons dried ginger, grated on a microplane
1 cup caster sugar
125g cold butter, in small pieces
1 egg
1 teaspoon golden syrup (or avocado honey which I used due to the lack of golden syrup in my house)
2 tablespoons preserved ginger, finely chopped
2 tablespoons preserved ginger syrup
2 tablespoons hot water
45 hard candies (or enough sliced caramel from previous adventures)

Preheat the oven to 160C. Place all the dry ingredients in a standing mixer. Add in the butter and beat until it resembles crumble mix. Add in the wet ingredients (syrups and egg) but not the water. If the mixture does not come together into a loose dough, add in the water.

Finally add in the preserved ginger pieces. Knead the dough lightly in the bowl with your hands. Then, using a teaspoon, form the dough into balls.

Place on a lined baking tray and press down lightly. Bake for 10 minutes. Place a candy atop each cookie (or the shards) and return to the oven for 4 minutes.

The caramel will melt over the top.

Allow to cool on the trays before packing away. (Obviously you can eat them warm from the oven, but be careful of the caramel which is hot!)