LearningHerbs Blog

Ginger Cookie Recipe

Are you looking for a healthy treat that you can bake with your children this holiday season? Well, Hailey and Rowan and I had fun making these ginger cookies from Lesley Tierra’s A Kid’s Herb Book. We love making cookie-cutter cookies, and this recipe made with sucanat and fresh ginger becomes a warming, nourishing treat.

Ginger is a wonderful warming herb that adds a nice spicy flavor while also aiding digestion. It’s great to add it to soups, teas, cakes and pies as well as cookies this time of year when the air is growing colder. It will warm our insides.

For the cookies you will need:

• 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)

• 3/4 cup of sucanat (or white sugar if you like)

• 2 eggs

• 2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

• 1 tsp. baking soda

• 1 and 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger

• 1 tsp. cinnamon

• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• 1 Tablespoon fresh, grated ginger.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Blend the butter and sugar together until creamy. I just do this with a spoon, mashing them together.

Beat in 2 eggs. I used an electric mixer for this, but am sure you could do it with some heavy mixing with a regular spoon.

Sift the flour and spices into the bowl with your other ingredients. Stir.

Stir in the tablespoon of fresh grated ginger root.

Chill the dough for 1/2 hour in the refrigerator.

Roll out the dough (about 1/4 inch thick) and use cookie cutters or your hands to create ginger cookie shapes.

Bake on buttered cookie sheet for 16 – 20 minutes.

Enjoy your healthy holiday treat, or encourage your children to give them as gifts to your friends and family! It’s always fun for them to be able to give something they made themselves.

-Kimberly

How to make licorice honey cough syrup

Here at our house, since the weather has changed, we’ve been dealing with on-going coughs. It’s so common for the change from warm sunny summer to colder, windier fall to lead to colds and coughs we wanted to give you a recipe for a honey cough syrup.

This way you and your family can move through any early fall illness quickly so you will be well for the upcoming holidays.

Licorice can be used to make a wonderfully soothing honey cough syrup. Licorice is a demulcent that will help break up mucus settled in your lungs, and it is an expectorant so it will help expel the mucus as well.

Licorice is also a calming herb so it can help us to get our much-needed rest when we are sick. Besides all of this it has a wonderful sweet taste (50 times sweeter than white sugar) that makes your medicine a pleasure to take.

The honey is anti-microbial, so it may help relieve the cause behind your cough as well as soothing your sore throat if you have one. One caution, though.

Please do not give your honey cough syrup to a child under the age of one. Honey can contain spores that could lead to botulism in the very young until they have built up enough beneficial bacteria in their digestive tract to deal with the spores.

So how do we make this licorice honey cough syrup?

First, make a decoction of the licorice. Measure out 1/2 cup of dried licorice root into a saucepan. Add 2 cups of water.

Bring the water to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until the water is reduced by half.

Strain.

Add 1/2 cup of honey while the tea is still warm. Stir until the honey dissolves fully.

Cool and then pour into a glass jar with a tight lid.

Store your syrup in the refrigerator.

It will last in there for about one month.

Take one teaspoon of syrup as needed for coughs. One teaspoon every hour or two is probably a good rule of thumb for a stubborn cough.

Licorice is also very soothing for sore throats and stomachaches and because it is anti-viral can help cure colds and flus, so these are other good uses for your licorice honey cough syrup.

WARNING: Do not take licorice root if you have high blood pressure or heart issues. 

Get dried licorice root here.

May your cough be soothed!

-Kimberly