Tipper Gore Makes Strange Ginger Snaps: First Lady Cook-Off #2

Did you know that Tipper Gore makes really weird ginger snaps?
O.K., maybe they're not that weird. Maybe it's just me.

I've always made gingersnaps the same way. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice, a tiny amount of cloves, molasses, salt, and the usual cookie dough nuts-and-bolts (flour, fat, binder, etc.)

You can take a look at last week's post for a (slightly) more thorough explanation, but basically, once upon a time Hillary made a comment about baking cookies and "having teas", and why she didn't do it. Family Circle magazine then took it upon itself to have Hillary and her husband's opponent's first lady, Barbara Bush, submit cookie recipes to the magazine. The recipes were printed and rated by readers. The winner has correlated with the winner of the election four out of five times (probably because of the bias involved with tasting cookies made by the wife of an either loved or much-maligned political candidate.)

Why is Ms. Gore's recipe so weird to me? You'll see in a moment. Without further ado...

Tipper Gore's Ginger Snaps (lightly adapted from the recipe listed in the New York Times)

•  3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 3/4 cup butter-flavored Crisco
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 flax eggs (each flax egg is 1 T flax put in 3 T water and allowed to set for 10 minutes)
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tsp. white vinegar

You know the drill. Preheat the oven to 325 F (not 350 F). Mix the dries. Mix the wets (sugar is a wet). Put the dries in the wets. Put it on the pan. Bake for 15-16 minutes.

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Why is this weird? She doesn't use allspice. She uses vinegar, which sort of makes sense because she doesn't want the metallic flavor of baking powder. But why does she need to avoid it? Because there's no freaking salt. Geez, Tipper. What were you thinking?

I shouldn't be so nasty--the cookies were actually pretty good. The lack of allspice was a little weird but brought the ginger taste to the forefront, which I sort of liked.

I also made a few cookies with lemon juice instead of vinegar (they have the same pH) and some lemon zest. I'm not too fond of lemon, but my mother and all of my lemon-loving friends really liked them. I thought the lemon and the molasses made a very dissonant, sloppy taste. Next time I'm going to leave out the molasses. There was a high note, and a low note, but not really anything in the middle, and it made it kind of weird. Also, molasses and lemon is just a really strange combination. I suppose sans-molasses it will be more like a ginger-sugar-lemon cookie, but I bet it'll taste awesome.

If Laura Bush Were A Vegan: First Lady Cook-Off #1

"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies."

I'm not going to go too much into the politics, because I don't understand it very well, but it was something like this: the at-that-time-former Governor of California Jerry Brown (who also happens to be the current Governor of California) asked Hillary why she was working at a law firm while her husband was the Governor of Arkansas. His accusation, I think (none of the sources seem to state too directly what was going on) had something to do with corruption (i.e. accusing the Clintons of coordinating their work to serve their own self-interests), but Hillary's response was the above quote. A lot of feminists and housewives as well as traditionalists got very angry with her--which probably helped Bill Clinton lose the 1992 election.

More importantly, the charade inspired Family Circle magazine to launch an actual bake between Hillary and Barbara Bush, the Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's wife. Each potential First Lady sent in a cookie recipe, which was printed in Family Circle. Readers could bake each recipe and vote for their favorites, and the cookie with the most votes at the end of the contest would win.

The magazine has run the contest five times since 1992, and amazingly (or not, considering that the sample size is small and that political preferences probably bias the taste buds), it correctly predicted the winner of the corresponding election four times.

Today, though, I will ask what I think is a profoundly interesting question: what if Laura Bush became a vegan? What would happen to her cookies?

My experiments lead me to believe it would be something very delicious

Unfortunately, I haven't made a control omnivore batch yet--this first round (there will be more) of presidential cookie manufacture was a pretty slapdash and spur-of-the-moment type thing. All I had in the way of dry sweetener was a half-empty bag of powdered sugar. I cranked out a quarter-batch of Laura Bush's "cowboy cookies". I ended up using a little less sugar, and eyeballing the dry ingredients because I didn't know I was low on sugar until I'd mixed the flour and baking soda and I was tired.

Laura Bush's Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies (adapted from the New York Times' recipe)

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ cups butter-flavored Crisco
• ~2 ½ cups granulated sugar (I actually used powdered sugar, which would be a different volume, but I did it by weight, so roughly 17.8 oz.)
• 5 tablespoon molasses (why is there molasses? Because I didn't have any brown sugar. 1 c white sugar + 2 T molasses = 1 c brown sugar)
• 3 flax eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 3 cups vegan chocolate chips (I recommend Guittard semi-sweet or extra dark, or Enjoy Life if you're allergic to dairy--otherwise, read the ingredient labels; some chocolates will be vegan without even advertising it)
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 2 cups unsweetened flake coconut
• 2 cups chopped walnuts

You know the drill by now. Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the sugar, molasses, and Crisco. Add the flax eggs and vanilla. Gradually add the dry ingredients, then stir in chocolate chips, oats, etc. 

(I should add that, yes, they really are called Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies. I cannot believe the NYTimes abbreviated the title. Why skimp on true art?)

The cookies were actually quite tasty. My mother and I both liked them; my sister said they weren't quite sweet enough but ate several anyway. I really wouldn't have guessed they were vegan--which was quite unexpected in this particular case, because usually cookies like this get most of their flavor from butter, and butter-flavored Crisco just ain't quite the same.

My best guess for what's going on is the shear volume of non-cookie stuff in the dough. There was so much delicious chocolate, oat, coconut and walnut in there that I couldn't really taste the actual cookie. Which was perfectly fine. Awesome, in fact.

Tune in next week for more presidential cookery shenanigans.