I have gathered the ingredients and I am going to make the test batches of Gingered Duck Cookies in the next few days. The Sexy Blonde is in Barcelona on business, so I have fewer distractions to deal with (sadly). On the upside, she’s offered to smuggle back a bottle of absinthe for me, and just when my reserve is dwindling dangerously low.

The recipe should yield about 4 cups of dough, and I’m substituting Vermont maple syrup for molasses in a quarter of the batch (mix the rest of the ingredients, quarter the dough, add 1 tablespoon of maple to one quarter and 3 tablespoons of molasses to the rest) and then running tests of unaltered molasses against unaltered maple on cookie sheets and in muffin cups. Ginger and maple is a personal favorite combination and there was more than enough burned sugar flavor in the original recipe.

I’ll set aside the rest of the maple, unless it is an unfettered failure, and look to alter the molasses with combinations of lemon zest, almonds and carrots. I’m going to dig through some ginger bread and carrot cake recipes to see if there are other ingredients I may want to play with.