Soft Ginger Cookies

1. Place the butter in a mixing bowl. With the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, cream the butter until soft and creamy. This can take as little as 1 minute if your butter is soft, or up to 5 minutes if it's not too soft (especially in colder climes). Scrape the bowl as you go to make sure all the butter is being creamed properly.
2. When the butter is soft and creamy, add the salt, white sugar, brown sugar, and molasses, and cream all the ingredients together on medium high speed until fluffy. Scrape the bowl as you go. This can take about 2 - 5 minutes (depending on the temperature of the butter). Mix until you get the right creamy texture of the butter sugar mix.
3. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix until the eggs are well combined.
4. Sift the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice into a bowl (dry ingredients), and set aside.
5. Lower the speed of the mixer to the lowest setting. Add the dry ingredients in 3 or 4 additions, making sure not to overwork the dough in the process.
6. Add the crystallized ginger with the last addition of dry ingredients, and mix until the last bit of flour is about 90% mixed in.
7. Remove the bowl from the mixer, and mix the dough the rest of the way with a wooden spoon or spatula. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl so that all of the flour is mixed in well.
8. The dough will be fairly soft. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours or until the dough is chilled and easy to scoop.
9. Preheat oven to 375°F / 190°C. Line at least 2 half sheet pans with parchment paper.
10. Scoop the chilled cookie dough using a medium cookie scoop (about 60 g per portion). You can scoop out all of the cookie dough, and keep it chilled in the fridge if you’re baking the cookies within a day, OR freeze it for later.
11. OPTIONAL - roll each dough portion in raw sugar or white sugar.
12. Place 4 or 5 cookie portions on a half sheet pan (I prefer to bake 4 at a time since these cookies spread quite a bit).
13. Bake the cookies for 12 - 15 minutes in the preheated oven, rotating the tray once halfway through. In my conventional oven, this takes about 13 minutes.
14. Remove the cookie tray from the oven and let the cookies cool for a few minutes. Use a flat spatula to gently lift the cookies from the baking tray and place them on a cooling rack to cool completely.
15. Repeat with the rest of the cookie dough portions.
16. The cookies will have a slightly crisp edge and a soft middle as soon as they have cooled down. Cookies will soften with time during storage, and retain slightly chewy edges.

Storing the cookies

1. Store the cookies in an airtight container for 3 - 4 days at room temperature. To store them for longer, freeze them in a freezer bag (remove as much air as possible) for up to 1 month.
2. You can also freeze the cookie dough portions (once frozen, store them in freezer bags). You can bake these from frozen, but you may need to bake them for a couple of extra minutes then, depending on your oven.