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The family and I are celebrating the return of one of our favorite geeky shows tonight with fish fingers and custard! If you’re also a Doctor Who fan you know what’s up, if not you can get a little background here.

This is actually a surprise for the girls — they know I’ve been in the kitchen all morning baking but haven’t been allowed to come in and see what it is yet. And with that I have to admit that it’s not really fish fingers — we’re not that hardcore! These are actually shortbread cookies rolled in graham cracker crumbs, swiped from bakingdom.

We’re fairly new to the Doctor Who obsession — I want to say it’s only been a year or so — but it makes my little sci-fi heart happy, and fills a void left by Battlestar Galactica and Firefly and Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teen (it was not cool to be into sci-fi when I was a teenager so many hundreds of years ago, so it’s fun to get into it with the girls now, as evidenced by the TARDIS cake for the 14-year-old last November).

The custard (actually vanilla pudding) was also homemade because I’d already run out once to pick up forgotten graham crackers, and I couldn’t bring myself to run out again for a box of pudding. I put up with standing at the stove for what seemed like forever, but it was worth it. Homemade pudding is cool.

The fish fingers are delicious too, very light and crunchy. They’re really close to being too salty, though, so when I make them again I’ll go with just 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

If you’re a geek at heart and a fan of the Doctor, you can get the fish finger cookie recipe from bakingdom.com, and the homemade vanilla pudding recipe I used is below:

Homemade Vanilla Pudding
serves 6

3/4 c granulated sugar
3 Tb cornstarch
3 c cold milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 Tb butter
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a heavy medium saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch. Add milk and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until bubbly. Lower heat and cook and stir for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat. Gradually stir 1 cup of the milk mixture into the beaten eggs.

Add the egg mixture to the saucepan with the rest of the milk mixture and bring almost to a bubble but do not boil. Reduce heat and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and vanilla extract.

Pour pudding into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least six hours before serving.

To get the memory of our last gingerbread experience out of my head, the girls and I decided to make our favorite gingersnap cookies this afternoon.

These gingersnaps have a permanent place in my Christmas cookie giveaways for the neighbors, and they’re always the first to go when I have the leftovers sitting on the counter for my family.

The girls have fun rolling the dough in the sugar before putting them on the pan, and as you can imagine the house smells amazing while they bake. While the outside of these cookies gets nice and crunchy, once you take them out of the oven they deflate a bit and create an amazing chewy cookie.

Careful, these are very addicting!

The Best Gingersnap Cookies Ever

3/4 C shortening
1 C sugar
1/4 C unsulphured dark molasses
1 egg
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 C all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream the shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until well mixed, then add the molasses and mix well.

Add the ginger, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and mix well, then add the flour and mix until well combined.

Using a scoop, scoop out dough and form into balls, about 1 inch around. Roll the balls of dough in sugar and then place on a baking sheet. Give them room, they will spread out while baking.

Bake in the preheated oven for 9 minutes.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie is Gingerbread Baby Cakes and is hosted by Karen, who has the recipe at her blog.

I was excited to try these because I love gingerbread, and because I had just gotten the awesome ramekins I used for the pot pies a couple of weeks ago. The ramekins worked perfectly for the cakes, and there was just enough batter for all six.

However… no one really liked these 🙁 They smelled amazing while they were baking, and I couldn’t wait for them to cool enough to give them a try. I served them up for dessert night with some whipped cream, and only one kid finished hers (actually, I cut them all in half because each cake was pretty rich).

I really can’t say what it was that put us off. Maybe we’re used to overly-sugared gingerbread cookies? But it just tended too far on the bitter side of things.

I thought it might have been the coffee extract I used in place of the instant espresso powder (I have never been able to find instant espresso powder), but I only used 1-1/2 teaspoons for the whole batch, so I don’t think that was the problem.

Anyway, so I’ve got three cakes left that I can’t stand the thought of tossing. I’m thinking I might freeze them and add them to a batch of homemade ice cream — I think the ice cream could temper the richness of the cakes. I guess we’ll see!