Ginger brings warmthto the holiday kitchen

When ice crystals sparkle on the window panes, nothing wraps a home in warmth like the aroma of freshly baked gingery confections. Crackly cookies, little ginger people waiting for their personalities to be applied in icing, and moist gingerbread all offer comfort this time of year.

''Gingerbread has a distinct New England heritage," says food historian Barbara Haber. ''Every New England cookbook going back to the 1700s has gingerbread recipes." Gingerbread evolved in England when flour was first milled, she says. As soon as settlers in this country could get flour, they added whatever spices they had on hand and made cakes.

Those early gingerbreads were hard cookies, something like today's gingerbread men. Molasses, which was inexpensive and easy to come by, was a key ingredient. According to Haber, cookbooks in the 1800s began to feature ''more opulent" gingerbread recipes, with butter, eggs, and more sugar than molasses (molasses was considered a food of the poor). The spices varied but usually included some combination of ground ginger, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and coriander. Richer cakes contained raisins and candied citrus peel.

Cookbook author Abigail Johnson Dodge is so fond of gingerbread that she brings chewy gingersnaps to a cookie swap every year (see related story on page D1). The recipe is on the cover of her book, ''The Weekend Baker" (W.W. Norton). It's a forgiving formula that can be shaped and frozen in advance, so Dodge -- who prepares 12 dozen ginger ''crackles" every year -- usually begins her preparations two months in advance. She bakes whenever she has time and freezes the cookies until it's time to deliver them. They're an ''old-fashioned, homey cookie," she says.

Though Dodge's crackles call for ground ginger, she's been baking with fresh, crystallized, and candied ginger, too.

Local chef Rick Katz also loves to use fresh ginger in baking. Ginger ice cream is almost always on the menu at Picco (an acronym for Pizza and Ice Cream Company), Katz's new South End restaurant. He infuses the custard base with fresh ginger, then strains the mixture before freezing it into ice cream, leaving the plant's fiery essence mixed with a smooth, creamy, icy dessert. But it is the restaurant's luscious gingerbread, also made with fresh ginger, that will make you forget the temperature outside with the first bite.

''Most gingerbreads, I find, use powdered ginger, which I hate," says the former pastry chef. ''They also use other spices." Katz's gingerbread contains only finely chopped fresh ginger and is very light on molasses. He dilutes the molasses with maple syrup, and the cake has a very light texture.

As the days grow colder, ginger confections will fill the kitchen with an old-fashioned warmth.