The original recipe included a teaspoon of salt, but I found that I enjoyed them better when I made a batch without it. The bacon fat has plenty of salt in it; there’s no need for the extra. I’ve also tweaked this recipe with bourbon and black pepper to give you a little more bang for your bacony buck!
If you have a food processor, throw all of the ingredients in and give it a whir until the dough is smooth and firm. Otherwise, beat the bacon grease, bourbon, and sugar in a bowl and beat them well, and add the dry ingredients one by one.
Wrap the dough in plastic and chill it in the refrigerator for a few hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a few baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking sheets.
Put the extra sugar in a bowl. Grab about a tablespoon of dough and roll it into a ball and then roll it in the sugar until it is thoroughly coated. Put the sugared dough balls on the baking sheets about two inches apart.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookies are dark brown. Let them cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
If you pull these cookies out a minute or two early, you will get a gooey-ooey rich version that’s best eaten quickly, because it gets soggy when cool. Let them finish baking, and in true gingersnap form, they’ll stay good for a long time. The staler they get, the better they are dipped in tea.
Freeze the cookies: Make individual balls of the dough as described above, but instead of the oven, pop that baking sheet into the freezer. Once the dough balls are frozen hard, store them in an airtight container in layers separated by parchment paper, or if you are lazy like me, throw them all together in a gallon freezer bag so that you have to chip at it with ice picks to get a few cookie balls off. Bake the frozen cookies without thawing them at 350 for 12-14 minutes. Use within 3 months, or you’ll have the horror of frostbitten cookies.