Gingerbread People

I have two things for you today: an awesome gingerbread cookie recipe and inspiration for decorating styling your gingerbread people.

The recipe I am sharing produces a chewy cookie that won’t dry out. Just keep the dough chilled and follow my tips on how to roll it out without using flour on a board. The results are totally worth the extra steps!

Almost Foolproof Gingerbread Cookies

Yield: 2 dozen medium people | Prep time: 90 minutes | Cook time: 8 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• dash of salt
• 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup + 2 tbs unsulphured blackstrap molasses (+ spray oil for the measuring cup)
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of Royal Icing  for decoration (recipe here)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Sift together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in a mixing bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar, beating on medium high for 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the molasses and egg, beating for another minute or two until smooth. Combine the dry mixture in parts, stirring by hand with a spoon. Divide the dough in half. Flatten each into a small rectangle, wrap in a big piece of plastic wrap. Set in fridge for 1+ hours until chilled and firm.

Remove one half of the dough from the fridge to roll out at a time. Peel back the plastic wrap from the dough on all sides (don’t forget the bottom!) Then, lay the plastic wrap loosely back down on top of the dough, so that it is not tight on the edges and the dough is able to spread in each direction (you will roll the dough out inside of the plastic wrap, rather than sprinkling flour on the counter top and rolling it out there.)

Cut out cookies, reserving scraps. Transfer each cookie to a parchment lined baking sheet. Pat all the dough scraps back into a rectangle, re-wrap in plastic and place back in fridge. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. Transfer from baking sheet to a cooling rack. Allow the cookie sheet to cool down before placing the next batch on it. Roll and cut the second half of the dough and bake those cookies. Then make a batch from the scraps of the first two batches.

Allow cookies to cool completely before icing.

All that work just so we could decorate them with a few marks of white icing. Justin and I took turns piping royal icing onto our cookies. Of course, we made a few traditional fellows.

But, they got boring. So, we made an eskimo, a gentleman, a butt crack, a book worm, a NOM t-shirt, a polka dot bikini, a ninja turtle, a jailbird, and a robot.

I think every cookie is festive in its own way. Of course, my favorite is the one with the butt crack because my sense of humor is as mature as a 6 year old. I actually wanted to decorate all of them with that way, but Justin used his better judgment (and fine piping skills, might I add) to make the call.

The next question: how would this recipe hold up when baked as a solid sheet for, say, the construction of a gingerbread house? I have been wanting to make an extravagant candy-coated house for the past few years. I think this year, it is going to happen.

P.S. This is the 500th post to be published on Blunder Construction! Who knew I had that many things to say?