OM NOM NOM: The most magical cookies of all

This little compliation has got to be the greatest Hannukah present I've ever received:

This perfectly combines my literophilia with my sugarophilia. LOVE THIS BOOK. My father knows me too well. When we first started flipping through this book, the first thing that caught my eye was the black sausage. Then I realized that the recipe called for two cups of blood.

Moving on.

My dad immediately was drawn to the Chewy Ginger Biscuits recipe, which is completely unsurprising. And when my dad wants a specific food, he becomes fixated to the point of obsession. It runs in the family. (Frozen yogurt? Reuben dip? Pigs in a blanket? The great ongoing cheesesteak pilgrimage of 2012? You get the point.)

So my dear friend Kyle Krueger and I decided to make these ginger biscuits. According to the cookbook, these biscuits make an appearance in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Harry pisses off Dolores Umbridge, the great pink-clad villain of our time. She sends him to Professor McGonagall, the great old-lady bad-ass of our time. Instead of scolding Harry for his transgressions, McGonagall offers him a cuppa (I'M SO AUTHENTIC) and a newt-shaped ginger biscuit. The cookbook doesn't call for the biscuits to resemble the aforementioned lizard; however, everything tastes better as an amphibian. Kyle and I decided to make our own newt-shaped cookie cutter, and although I am an AWFUL handiperson, Kyle has a knack for construction of any physical object:

I wonder if he learned that in Construction Management school. Maybe there's a Working with Wire Cookie Cutters adjunct or something.

Anyway.

So we proceeded to make cutout cookies out of dough that was not even remotely designed to be shaped. Surprisingly, this worked pretty well! I would advise chilling the dough and using a sharp cold knife to make shapes sans cookie cutters.