Gingerbread Cookie Bites
Spiced brown-butter dough, baked at home, carried as trail dessert.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 2.1 oz
- cal / oz
- 157
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Snack
- No cook
- Car camping
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Day hike
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Butter | 200 g | browned; done at home, not in camp |
|---|---|---|
| White sugar | 75 g | |
| Brown sugar | 175 g | |
| Eggs | 2 | |
| All-purpose flour | 300 g | |
| Baking powder | 1 tsp | |
| Baking soda | 1/2 tsp | |
| Ground cloves | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground ginger | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground cinnamon | 1/4 tsp | |
| Ground black pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Toasted almonds | 60 g | chopped coarse; omit for a nut-free batch |
| Flaky salt | 1 tsp |
Method
- At home: melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. It foams, then quiets down and turns gold with a nutty smell. Pull it before it goes past brown.
- Pour the hot butter over both sugars and stir. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and pepper together, then work them into the wet mix until no streaks remain.
- Fold in the chopped almonds. Chill the dough 15 minutes so it stops spreading.
- Scoop 60 g balls onto a lined sheet, six to a tray. Sprinkle each with flaky salt.
- Bake at 180 C for 12-14 minutes, until the edges set and the centers still look soft. Rap the tray on the counter to knock the domes down.
- Cool on the tray a few minutes, then move to a rack. They firm up over the next ten minutes. Cool completely before packing or they sweat.
- In camp: open the bag.
This is a bakery cookie carried as trail food, so all the work happens in a kitchen. The brown butter is the reason: cooking the milk solids drives off water and leaves a nutty fat that keeps the cookie chewy for days instead of going sandy overnight. Chilling before the scoop does the same job from the other side, holding the shape so the cookie stays thick and stays edible after a day in a pack.
The spice load is small on purpose. A quarter teaspoon each of clove, ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper reads as gingerbread without the bitterness a heavier hand gives. Flaky salt on top matters more than it looks: 250 g of sugar needs something to push against. No stove, no water, no cleanup beyond the bag.
Packing
Cool them fully, then stack in a hard-sided container or a crush-proof jar. Loose in a food bag they turn to crumbs by day two. They keep about five days in warm weather, longer in cold.
Variations
- Swap the almonds for chocolate chips or pecans.
- Leave the nuts out entirely and add another 30 g of brown sugar for chew.
- Bake from frozen dough balls at 160 C for 15-20 minutes if you portioned ahead.
https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/kos/pepperkakecookies