Chocolate Ginger Cookies and Peanut Butter Marshmallow Chocolate Covered Ritz Crackers

I need to hurry with this post, but I MUST tell you about a couple goodies I’ve made for Christmas. 

First up some Chocolate Ginger Cookies.  I LOVE these.  They have the perfect chewiness and flavor.  I want to make them again, and again.  I got the recipe for these from Nicole at Baking Bites.  (If you haven’t before, check out Nicole’s blog, she has some GREAT stuff on there and she has a new baking book out!)

I supposed you could say I every so slightly adapted this recipe.  Nicole added 1/3 cup crystallized ginger to her cookies and I cannot find crystallized ginger where I live, so I left it out and added a little more ground ginger.  Did I mention that I love these cookies?  They are the perfect holiday cookie.

I’ve decided not to repost the recipe since the only thing I did different was not add crystallized ginger.  Nicole suggested baking the cookies for 10-12 minutes and I only baked mine 8 minutes.  I wanted to make sure they were crunchy and I’ve learned that my oven seems to bake hot and fast.  Eight minutes was perfect.

You NEED to try these cookies.

These cookies were rolled in a coarse (turbinado) sugar, which adds just the crunch I want.  Oh, Nicole suggests pressing down on each cookie dough ball slightly before baking and I didn’t do that either.  But really, you have to try these.

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Next I must share with you some super easy chocolate covered crackers that I made for a cookie swap.  You  might call it a cop out, since there was no baking involved.  I just call it that these are de-licious!  I found the idea for these at Taste of Home. 

At Taste of Home these are called Yummy Cracker Snacks.  That’s not the name I would give them.

Peanut Butter Marshmallow Chocolate Covered Ritz Crackers, adapted by Katrina from D. Weaver, Taste of Home

Ritz Crackers

Peanut Butter

Marshmallow Creme

Chocolate candy coating, chopped and melted

Place crackers on a wax paper lined baking sheet.  Put peanut butter in a piping bag (or zip top plastic bag, with the corner snipped off).  Pipe some peanut butter on to every other cracker.  Put some marshmallow creme into another piping bag or plastic zip top bag with the corner snipped off.  Pipe marshmallow onto the remaining crackers.  Sandwich a peanut butter cracker with a marshmallow cracker. 

Melt chocolate in a microwave safe bowl, stirring every 20-30 seconds.  Dip each sandwich into the melted chocolate, lifting them out with a fork and tapping the excess chocolate off the cracker.  Set on waxed paper.  After 4-5 crackers have been dipped, sprinkle with candy decorations.  Let chocolate firm up in cold place (I set the sheets on the deep freeze out in the garage!)

Mmmm!  What other things can you think of to sandwich in between crackers and dip in chocolate?  I thought using graham crackers with marshmallow inside would be delicious S’mores!

I also got on a chocolate dipping roll and dipped Teddy Grahams (the chocolate chip ones!), Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish Preztel Crackers, Mini Oreo Cookies and Mini Nutter Butter Cookies.  All SO good!  I put a bunch of each in a pretty holiday glass and wrapped them up in plastic for the kid’s teacher gifts.

Happy Holidays!