I’m a fan and subscriber to the King Arthur Flour newsletter -

every recipe I have ever tried has been wonderful.

Lately a ginger snap recipe came thru and since I had some around,

I finely diced some candied ginger and added it to the batter.

Then I poked a dark chocolate covered ginger candy into each one – voila, delish!

So, anyway,  here’s my take on their recipe

Gingersnaps – makes about sixty cookies

For the cookie dough

3/4 cup vegetable shortening*

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 large egg

1/3 cup molasses

2 1/3 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 to 2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup finely diced crystallized ginger

about 60 small pieces of dark chocolate covered candied ginger

For the coating

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Beat together the shortening, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

Beat in the egg, then the molasses.

Add the flour and spices, beating to make a smooth, fairly stiff dough.

Stir in the finely diced candied ginger

To make the coating, combine the sugar and cinnamon, and place in a shallow pan or dish.

Drop the dough in 1″ balls into the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Roll the balls in the sugar to coat, then transfer them to the prepared baking sheets,

leaving at least 1-1/2″ between them.

Poke a chocolate covered candy into each cookie.

Bake the cookies for 11 minutes, for cookies that are crisp around the edges, and “bendy” in the center.

Bake for 13 minutes, for cookies that are crisp/crunchy all the way through.

(I baked for 8 minutes then rotated the pan and baked for 7 more minutes.)

Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool right on the pan, or on a rack.

Cool completely, then store tightly wrapped, at room temperature.

I only baked 24 and rolled and stuffed the remaining batter and put the balls on waxed paper on a cookie sheet in the freezer and will bag them when they are hard.  I’ll have to get back to you on how the chocolate holds up!

Here is a photo of one of this summer’s moonflowers -(remember the seed pods in the basket above?  Nothing works better to pretty up a chain link fence! And the hummingbirds love the flowers.  But, then again, it was a lot of work today to cut those vines away.  I think I’ll plan on something else next year, maybe something I find in the spring at the Walter Knoll Florist garden center!

Got your holiday shopping started?  We’ve got our holiday features up!  Gifts from Walter Knoll are great for corporate gift giving! Check out our poinsettias – better than anything you’ll get at the big box hardware stores!  We also have any size gourmet gift basket you could want!

There’s a NEW holiday tradition being added to St. Louis’s social calendar this year! “Holiday Magic” comes to America’s Center, December 4-6, and it promises to be an exciting and entertaining event for families and shoppers. Enjoy wood carving demonstrations and hands-on crafts, a dazzling light show with over 40,000 holiday lights choreographed to holiday music, and a full-scale indoor carnival.
And best of all . . . Walter Knoll Florist will be there with a special treat for children . . .

It’s gonna be great – we’ll have hundreds, maybe thousands of white poinsettias for kids to paint – as well as protective gear to keep their little outfits tidy – so come on down and get in the Christmas Spirit!

As we prepare and set up our booth for the big show we are also installing over 75 real live Christmas trees around the center-complete with lights!

And our booth will have lots of fully decorated trees and ideas as well as special “show” pricing – there will be ornaments and garland and wreaths and swags you can buy and take with you and we will also have on display our Holiday Arrangements (you may have seen them on our Holiday Unwrapped 2009 brochure we mailed out last week) – so come on down, bring the kids (and $5 of course-proceeds benefit Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club). Tell ‘em Di sent you!

Speaking of poinsettias – you know it’s an old wives tale about them being toxic, don’t you? Well, although we don’t recommend you eat them, they are NOT poisonous.

Here is a pic of a poinsettia painted by a 73-year old!

Can’t get down to the Convention Center this weekend? Don’t despair – visit our garden center at California and LaSalle and see all our poinsettia varieties – here’s a sampling!

The universe of the Walter Knoll Florist Garden Center at the corner of Californa and LaSalle that is!  Well it of course happened over the weekend – Mr Stinky opened up and smelled so rotten he had to be moved to the far back corner of our greenhouse!  I heard there was a group of 8 boy scouts here on a field trip on Saturday that all got to be grossed out by the Mr Stinky aroma!  Here is Mr Stinky in all his bloominess!

I believe within the next few days we should be getting the wonderful aroma of Mr Stinky in our greenhouse!

We’d love to see you!  And you’ll love seeing all the new product coming in almost daily!

Ready to do some gardening? We are!

The Garden Center is a riot of color right now!  So many poinsettias!  If you are in the city, plan to make a trip to Florist Row and the Walter Knoll Florist Garden Center -

You can read about Pointsettia care and feeding or visit our web site wkf.com for more of our holiday selections

Here’s a new plant I picked up over at our Garden Center a couple month’s ago.

A Passion Flower plant, it’s tag was gone, don’t know if I have blue or red blooms to expect, but I’m hoping for the red. I’m crazy for the wacky tendrils – they shoot out and curl up in just a few hours!

Now here’s something you have probably never seen before – Rainbow Roses!  They’re alive!

They are so festive and no one walks by them without stopping and inspecting.

A really unusual bouquet in any quantity!

I think they’ll sell like gangbusters.