Is it weird to see me in the kitchen?

I wanted to try out a new dessert recipe to take to friends' after dinner; but I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time, so I flipped through a book I received at one of my bridal showers, entitled: Half-Baked Gourmet (Partly Homemade Totally Delicious) Desserts by Tamara Holt.

I found several recipes that sounded delicious--but they all required to be baked/prepared, and then served right away. Finally, I found what I needed.

Cranberry-Ginger Oatmeal Cookies sounded the like perfect cookie to try, because it basically is fixing a cookie mix from the store, but adding delicious bits and pieces to make it special: dried cranberries, white chocolate chips, and the kicker: crystallized ginger.

picture found after Google-Image search

This was such an interesting ingredient I had never used before. I found a container of crystallized ginger in the spices, and though it was fairly expensive, I was determined to test the recipe.

The consistency was soft, not hard like rocks, as I had anticipated. I chopped it up easily to add to the cookies. Surprisingly, I used up half of the container to fill the 3 tablespoons needed for the batch of cookies.

Cookies were not going to cut it. Though the recipe seemed exotic enough for my regular dessert tastes (chocolate in any form is usually enough to satisfy me), it was too plain. So I did some searching online to see what could be paired with ginger.

I found this suggestion for serving ginger cookies with pears and champagne gelatto. The blogger said it would be fine to substitute champagne for amaretto. So, we were on the search at a Super Target for amaretto ice cream. Though we could not find any, we did find pear ice cream with caramel swirl and cinnamon.

Combined with pear halves and the ice cream, the cookies (heated up just a touch in the microwave) were a hit. I added a bit more pear syrup than planned, so it was a fairly soupy dessert, but the flavors were great. I definitely will be adding the cookies to a list of favorite non-chocolate desserts.