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Soft Gingerbread Cookies with a simple sugar glaze are the cookie of the season! Delicate, spicy-sweet flavors and fun shapes please both kids and adults. Talk about something to be thankful for…
Ingredients for Gingerbread Cookie Dough:
1 cup salted butter
1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (6 tablespoons)
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 large egg
1/4 cup molasses
1 3/4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
Ingredients for the Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp half n’ half (cream or milk)
sprinkles, chocolates or candies for decorating (if desired)
Notes: Makes approximately 2 dozen 3 inch cookies. This recipe is not suitable for Gingerbread House making. These are soft cookies.
Directions:
Make the cookie dough.
1) In an electric mixer, cream butter and add brown sugar.
2) Add ginger, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, baking soda and pinch of salt.
3) Mix well and scrape down sides of mixer bowl to ensure all the spices are incorporated. The dough should be fluffy and well combined.
4) Add egg and molasses. Mix well.
5) Add flour and mix on low until combined. Dough will be sticky.
6) Place dough in a container and refrigerate several hours or overnight for best results. The spices will ripen as the dough proofs.
Make the cookies:
1) Generously flour a wooden board and rolling pin. You will find this dough to be more delicate and much stickier than a typical sugar cookie dough.
2) Cut out shapes, place on baking sheet. Bake in a 325 (F) oven for 7-9 minutes. For softer cookies, do not allow to brown. Makes 2 dozen 3 inch cookies. Recipe doubles and freezes well.
NO GLAZE, NO GLORY!
Allow baked cookies to cool before glazing. Combine powdered sugar and half n’ half to make glaze. For a thicker glaze use more sugar and less liquid. The easiest method is to dip each cookie, top-side down, into glaze and carefully lift out. Place on cookie cooling rack and allow excess glaze to drip off.
To decorate cookies with glaze, fill a plastic bag with glaze and snip the tip. Decorate as desired.
Share and enjoy.
Link to the The Cookie Confession blog post.
that looks yum. I want me some gingerbread cookies!
Thanks, Farina! I know… it’s a shame we only eat them at this time of year!!
I just made these today with my kids. They came out pretty good! I think I may have rolled them out a little too thick though. The thinner ones had just the right “chew”. Good flavor too.
Alright, maria! What a fun thing to do with your kids… thanks for letting me know about the chew and the flavor. Those are the two most important things in my book when it comes to making -er- eating cookies!
I made these this weekend according to the recipe, chilled overnight, etc. But they were way too sticky for me to cut them out. I ended up rolling them into balls and flattening with some sugar on top- very tasty, but i wonder what I did wrong? Even with flour I couldn’t get them to not stick to everything. I’ve made many a gigerbread men, sugar cookie near expert ;-) but I could not get these to cut and unstick to my counter. Too sticky for me to control apparently, but tasty and wonderful, thanks for the recipe.
Oh no, Patti! Gosh, I’ve racked my brain as to why the dough turned out too sticky to control. I’m so sorry…
I know you mentioned you did let the dough chill, was it hard when you took it out of the fridge? Did you roll it cold? I find rolling it while it’s cold, in small batches, cutting like 3 cookies from each rolling works for me…
I use a very generous sprinkling of flour on a wooden board, I flour my rolling pin and dip the cutters in flour too. I don’t go that flour crazy with sugar cookies, but I did use a lot of flour to roll and cut these. (the 12th & 13th pics down the page show the flour and amount of dough I work with)
I’m happy to hear that they tasted good and your solution of making gingerballs (lol!) sounds like what I would have done in your situation.
Thanks for commenting and letting me know your results, it really is helpful to me and others.
Happy holidays!
Cheers,
Betty
This is great thank you.
I can’t believe it’s that time of year already. Seriously, weren’t we just eating strawberry shortcakes? And now, it’s time for gingerbread? The year has flown, but it’s not so bad when you can enjoy these festive, spice-warming, cute-as-a-button cookies.
awesome recipe, i had great non-crumbly results. i will add more ginger next time for a strong ginger flavour, otherwise, very pleased! :D
YAY! So glad to hear you had delicious results!!
Thanks for a great recipe.