The Ginger KICK! Cookbook

By Danielle Ackley-McPhail

The Ginger KICK! Cookbook explores the many different facets of candied ginger. Not just in sweet dishes and baking, but savory recipes as well. Explore the sweet, spicy, savory world of Ginger KICK!

This book contains 39 recipes that span the width and breadth of the culinary realm.

Including:

Maple-Ginger Candied Bacon

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paper Phoenix Press
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781942990932

Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Award-winning author, editor, and publisher Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. In 2014 she joined forces with Mike McPhail and Greg Schauer to form eSpec Books. Her published works include eight novels, Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today's Promise, The Halfling's Court, The Redcaps' Queen, Daire's Devils, The Play of Light, and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo collections Eternal Wanderings, A Legacy of Stars, Consigned to the Sea, Flash in the Can, Transcendence, The Kindly Ones, Dawns a New Day, The Fox's Fire, Between Darkness and Light, Echoes of the Divine, and the non-fiction writers' guides The Literary Handyman, More Tips from the Handyman, and LH: Build-A-Book Workshop. She is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, No Longer Dreams, Heroes of the Realm, Clockwork Chaos, Gaslight & Grimm, Grimm Machinations, A Cast of Crows, A Cry of Hounds, Other Aether, The Chaos Clock, Grease Monkeys, Side of Good/Side of Evil, After Punk, and Footprints in the Stars. Her short stories are included in numerous other anthologies and collections. She is a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.In addition to her literary acclaim, she crafts and sells original costume horns under the moniker The Hornie Lady Custom Costume Horns, and homemade flavor-infused candied ginger under the brand of Ginger KICK! at literary conventions, on commission, and wholesale.Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail and four extremely spoiled cats.

Book preview

Introduction

What is Ginger KICK!? The simple answer, homemade flavored candied ginger. Yes, flavored candied ginger...unheard of, right? The concept boggles some people’s minds, particularly when I start ticking off the different flavors I make. I am sure I am not the only person in culinary history to have done something like this, but it isn’t something you are likely to find commercially.

I started making candied ginger the way I start most things...as a fluke. Over a decade ago I created a cookie recipe that uses candied ginger, but I always used store-bought. A little over a year ago I went to pick some up while I was shopping at a local farmers market with my friend Gene and he looked and me and said, Put that back, it is so easy to make!

After that, as they say, the rest was history.

See, the cookie I made—the recipe for which you will find in the following pages—is called Limoncello Coconut with Candied Ginger. Once I got the basics down for making the candied ginger I thought, Hey...I need this for a lemon cookie, why don’t I make lemon ginger to draw out the flavor? It worked so well I just went crazy experimenting with different flavors to the point that I was running out of ideas for what to try. (I even make it in coconut, now.)

I ran an internet search for flavored candied ginger to see what other people had done, just to get suggestions, only to find there was—or at least appeared to be—no one else making flavored candied ginger. Maybe that has changed by now, or maybe not...but I’ve built quite a following through Kickstarter and east coast conventions for my Ginger KICK! brand. It has been fun seeing the shock, wonder, and enjoyment blossom on people’s faces as they try a sample. Well. Most of the time.

Did I happen to mention why I chose the name Ginger KICK!?

No...I didn’t think so.

Well, because homemade candied ginger...at least the way I make it, kicks like a gosh darn mule! But in a good way. Usually. As long as you like ginger :) My method of candying highly concentrates the flavor because I don’t cook to a time. I cook to a texture. See, the original intent for my product was to make cookies. For that you want a nice, soft texture, not something woody or heavily crystalized because baking is just going to amplify those textures, giving the cookie an unpleasant mouth feel when you encounter one of those hard bits. To achieve the right texture I could end up boiling for hours, depending on the nature of the rhizome I am working with.

So, anyway, during the course of introducing people to Ginger KICK! at various conventions I have had a lot of people ask, What else can I do with it, besides just eat it?

This cookbook is, in part, my answer to