So, I made them. I saw the post at 4:05 PM and I had one sheet out of the oven already at 5:05. ZOMG. SO good. I commented with what I did on the recipe posting itself. In essence, brown butter, add spices, add butter to sugar-molasses mixture, beat to cool down some, add eggs, flour/salt/leavening. Proceed as directed. I also amped the ginger and added some white pepper. The sauteed spice thing really works to bloom spices. The texture was ideal - possibly the crispest cookie I've ever turned out at home without using baker's ammonia. Which I think I'll try next time, given the thin cross-section of this cookie. The finished cookies came out looking *exactly* like the ones on the beauty shot. Using a #70 scoop, I got 50 cookies per batch. A note that the cookies will still turn out perfectly round even if your blobs are irregular might have saved me some time on the first 40 cookies or so, as I tried to make perfectly spherical balls when in reality just making equal-mass pseudo-hemispherical blobs is all that matters. I'm starting to become completely convinced that the magic of Crisco is simply that it is anhydrous; in systems with sufficient sugar and protein (ie, cookies) , the differences in the fat structure itself just don't matter. Awesome post for today, though - it was perfect weather for a cookie like this! You're right, and I hadn't thought of heating the spices to bring out their flavor - did you cook the spices with the butter, or just add them once it was browned? Also, yes, baker's ammonia would be ideal here. And "equal-mass pseudo-hemispherical blobs" - LOVE it. Thanks for waking my brain up first thing this morning! PJH

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