Ginger Snaps

• 1 1/3 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp of beaten egg white
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 1/4 tsp vinegar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp cloves

The point of this recipe is: in the Joy of Cooking there is a recipe for ginger snaps. This is fine, but it makes 10 dozen cookies. If you have 10 kids to feed, and they are committed to the idea of only eating ginger snaps for three meals a day, that might still be fine.

But if you just want some cookies, maybe you will prefer this recipe, which is specially fudged (no, not that kind of fudge) to produce a dozen cookies, more or less.

If you want me to tell you how to do it, well, here goes:

1. Turn on the oven to 375 degrees or so.
2. Mix all the gooey stuff together.
3. Mix all the dry stuff together.
4. Mix all the dry stuff into the gooey stuff. (If you can't tell the gooey stuff from the dry stuff maybe you should just go to the store and buy a bag of cookies.)
5. Get out a cookie sheet and grease it up with shortening or something.
6. Deposit a teaspoon or so of cookie batter, evenly spaced (let's see you try to do this with 13 cookies); repeat until you are out of batter.
7. Bake the cookies. Be really careful not to overcook them. Maybe about 10 minutes is good.

My wife liked them.