No, I’m not going to write about a red-haired friend embarking on a diet and exercise program. This is one of the holiday baking posts that intrudes on the otherwise fiber-filled menu here at String each December.

Back in 2018 I mashed together several thoughts and came up with another more or less original cookie – the Triple Ginger White Chocolate Chip. I posted the recipe for it in 2019 after two full and successful holiday cookie test runs.

The dough for it is of the same basic type as a chocolate chip cookie, perhaps a bit lighter on the brown sugar, with added cream for more richness, and three types of ginger – dry ground ginger, minced candied ginger, and ginger juice – to give it kick. As I had done them before they were delightfully sharp and gingery, lighter than gingerbread, with the white “chocolate” morsels acting sort of like internal frosting, bringing little bursts of sweetness. They quickly became a family favorite, and I’ve done them every year since.

This year, the third year I’ve been attempting to bake at least some of the cookies in lower-carb incarnations of their former selves, I tried to reduce the caloric load of this cookie. I had dismal results in previous years using various mixes of almond and coconut flour for other cookies. A few were absolute failures, but I was encouraged this year by the introduction of King Arthur Keto Flour. I haven’t used it for bread, roti, or tortillas yet, but that may eventually happen. I have tried the recipes they posted for it on their website, for pie crust and chocolate chip cookies. Neither was good enough to post links for them. I also used various Swerve brand monkfruit based non-sugar sweeteners.

The Keto flour and the Swerve granulated, brown and confectioners sugars all claim to be near analogs in baking – in theory they can be subbed one-to-one for conventional products. In practical use, not really. More like “kinda” and “maybe.” To start with I find the Swerve products are sweeter than regular sugars. And the King Arthur Keto flour isn’t as hydrophilic as normal wheat flour (it doesn’t suck up as much moisture or fat). It also browns faster, but doesn’t leap from raw to burnt the way almond and coconut flours do. In fact, it does ok for dusting and pan frying – something the other flours totally fail.

As a result I tend to tinker with conventional recipes when subbing in these products. I will scant the quantities of the fake sugars by a tablespoon or two, and tinker with the liquid and fat levels when I use the fake flour to avoid a sticky, greasy dough.

Here is the cookie dough for the Triple Gingers this year, with amendments. I used my original but I left out a tablespoon of brown fake sugar and two of the white fake sugar, and added an extra tablespoon of cream:

It looks pretty normal, although the dough isn’t “sticking” to the chips like it usually does. But I continued on. I always fridge this type of dough overnight before portioning it out and baking it.

I did the usual – scooping using my 2.5 TBS dough scoop (like a little ice-cream scoop), then dividing the lump in half and rolling it into two balls. We like small cookies at holiday time because there are 10 types on the plate. Little cookies let folks sample without being overwhelmed.

Usually what happens with these drop cookie doughs is that if I make a generally round-ish ball, it melts during baking to yield a flatter nicely circular cookie. Here’s a picture of the Triple Gingers from a previous year to illustrate:

And here are this year’s. But not even the first most lumpy batch. That set went into the oven and then emerged in exactly the same shape – misshapen balls. No melting, no spreading. So when I made the second batch I flattened them with the heel of my hand. Again, no melting, no spreading. They may be blobs, but at least they are somewhat cookie shaped. Second and third batches seen before (left) and after baking (right):

Not my most attractive product, for sure. To be fair, I did notice that the King Arthur Keto chocolate chip recipe didn’t make spreading cookies either, but I thought that was because I did something wrong. Those also just didn’t taste right. Kind of like I had used rye flour and cardboard by mistake, and with the texture of a store-bought packaged cookie, and not a comforting home-made one.

Back to the Gingers… How did they taste? I sampled (of course). While they are ok, they are not as they should be. They don’t have the cardboard/rye flavor I didn’t like in the chocolate chip cookies, which is good. But they don’t have the ginger punch of my original recipe, and I suspect they will get hard quickly. They are sweet, with a pleasant caramel note, but that note reduces the ginger to an afterthought. Ugly and disappointing as they are, they are still serve-able, and will take their place in this year’s cookie line up. But obviously more tinkering is warranted. Between the differential take-up of the butter by the flour, and the performance of the fake sugar, successful adaptation will take a lot more than just dumping more ginger into this recipe.

And as a last note – remember I said that the dough didn’t hold onto the chips? I had to jam them in, which is why so many are on the surface. When I was done forming the cookies I had a puddle of extras left behind. I’ve never seen that happen before with any type of morsel-bearing cookie.

And I think I should get a medal for not snacking on them as I finished the bake.