Soft Gingerbread Cookies !tweaked again!

Ok so last week I made soft gingerbread cookies and today decided to tweak them again.  I had the idea that gingerbread and lemon sounds good....so I figured a small amount of zest in the dough and combine the sugar dough is rolled in with a little zest to give more lemon flavour.  In making these I wasn't sure it would work....overwhelming response is that this is a great combination and the lemon doesn't overpower the ginger.  The cookies remained soft in texture and kept the classic round shape.  

The originals went over well too as always but the lemon ones seemed to have an extra element to them.

Soft Gingerbread cookies

Ok so I was in the mood to enjoy some gingerbread but I don't enjoy the tough cookies it takes your jaw muscles to break.  I quite enjoy the softer ones.  I searched online and found a recipe for them. 

Here is the link for the recipe I used:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/big-soft-ginger-cookies

So I found that at the time of cooking these cookies were very soft.  They were deliciously ginger flavoured and held that classic shape.  My family gobbled up the sugar coated ones that night.

My tweak: I enjoyed them rolled I sugar but decided to try tweaking the recipe a bit for the holidays.  I made half the batch with rolling them in candy cane crumbs instead of sugar.  They are very pretty even though they didn't quite melt into that classic round shape, but I find that a day later all the cookies are very hard.  

Kids reviewed these tweaked cookies :

"Yummy I love the candy cane. It's so Christmassy!"

"Mmmmmm"

"Yummmmm"

I couldn't get much more of a review from them as they were too busy eating them.  I don't know if I will roll them again but it made for an interesting combination.