My mother doesn’t bake. She’s a great cook, but she avoids recipes and baking usually entails rather particular recipes, so she leaves the baking to my father and me. She also has a well developed sweet tooth, so when she has a hankering for a baked good she drops oh so many not-so-subtle hints about what would be really wonderful for dad or me to make. Her most requested cookie, amongst our vast repertoire of cookies, is this one, the ultra-thin gingersnap. Thin and crisp, the cookie practically melts in your mouth. Once you have one, it is almost impossible to stop eating them. The original recipe was passed along from food blogger to food blogger years ago by a woman who has since stopped blogging. She claimed to have gotten the recipe from Chez Panisse, when she asked for it while interviewing for a job. The two keys to this recipe I’ve found are 1) slicing the frozen cookie dough as thin as possible, the thinner the cookie, the crispier it will be, and 2) including the 1/8 of a teaspoon of ground black pepper that the recipe calls for. Black pepper is an odd ingredient to add to a cookie, but you’ll just have to take it on faith that it works in this recipe. Unless you have an aversion to black pepper, be sure to include it.

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