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3 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground ginger

2 sticks butter, at room temperature

½ cup packed dark brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg white

¾ cup golden syrup or light corn syrup

½ cup sugar for rolling the cookies

Set the oven racks to the upper and lower middle positions, preheat the oven to 375°F, and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and ginger.

In a separate bowl, beat the butter and the sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary, about 5 minutes. Add the egg, egg white, and golden syrup and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir on the lowest speed until combined. Scrape the bottom with a rubber spatula to make sure it is fully combined.

Scoop out balls of dough with a cookie scoop or tablespoon. Form into 1½-inch balls and roll in the sugar. Place the balls 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the pans and switching shelves halfway through baking. Slide the parchment paper onto wire racks to cool; do not remove the cookies individually until they cool. Repeat until all the dough is used up.

Makes 3½ dozen cookies

Be very careful not to overbake these cookies or they will be hard instead of soft and chewy. The cookies will be very soft when you take them out of the oven; they will set up as they cool.

Meringues

You can almost see the front-page headline: KILLED BY A MERINGUE. Neville recounts at the first Hogwarts feast how his uncle dropped him out of the window when his wife offered him a meringue. Meringues are good, but come on, they're not that good. Luckily, Neville's magic abilities — his family was so relieved because they thought he was a Squib — saved him from crashing to his death (see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 7).

save you ever wondered how people discovered that if you beat egg whites with a whisk, they turn into foam? In the 1500s, the Europeans discovered that happened when they beat egg whites with whisks made of twigs. They ate it raw, with cream, but a century later were already making meringue cookies.

2 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ cup granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 225°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the egg whites, salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat until soft mounds begin to form. Gradually add the sugar and beat until stiff but still glossy. If the meringue mixture is dry and cottony or has a curdled look, it's overbeaten, and you'll have to start over.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain or star tip and pipe 1-inch kisses or rosettes ½ inch apart on the cookie sheets. For a more rustic look, plop down teaspoonfuls instead of piping. Bake for 1 hour, rotating the pans and switching shelves halfway through baking. Leave the meringues in the oven another hour to dry out. Discard any leftover meringue mixture; it will not keep until the first batch is done.

Makes about 80 meringues

Chapter Nine

Holiday Fare

Draco Malfoy taunts Harry Potter about having no proper family to return to for the Christmas holidays, but Harry isn't bothered at all. He can't think of a place he'd rather stay than Hogwarts. He's perfectly happy to be anywhere but with the Dursleys, who regard him as the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to them. And nothing beats the decorations in the Great Hall, where fir trees are covered with everlasting snow and real, live fairies flit among the branches. Also, the Dursleys would never provide a glorious feast for Christmas dinner such as the ones produced by the Hogwarts house-elves.

Harry enjoys the other holidays as well. Halloween is fun, with real bats swooping around