Gingerbread Cookies

 

Oh.  These Gingerbread Cookies.  Oh. 

By the time I share this though, the major cookie baking holidays are over, gingerbread long forgotten, and we’re sailing towards a new year.  A new decade!  Wow.  Ok but do some incredibly serious planning ahead and add these cookies to your list for next year, trust me.

Or pffffttt, there’s no holiday limitation built in here, bake ’em whenever, they’re just darn tasty.  And, super easy too!  

In our house, we call these Ginger Finns.  Heh. 

So cute, yeah? Heh, I love this cookie cutter!

Several years ago during the holiday season, Mike suggested I bake up some Gingerbread Cookies.  Huh.  I had never done it before.  To me, they always seemed a mystical sorta, I dunno, too complicated, mysterious cookie maybe?

I was quite nervous about this.  I had no idea what constituted a good one.  I read and read and looked at various different recipes, still unsure and feeling bogged down by “well gee, which the heck one?!”

See, growing up, I didn’t much eat gingerbread or gingerbread cookies or things gingerbread related.  I’d built a gingerbread house or two out of pre-baked parts, sure, but we never ate them.  Sooo the whole thing was a bit, mmm, unfamiliar.

Turns out, Mike purchased an early holiday gift for me, a German Shepherd cookie cutter.*  Well, I say early gift as he was too excited about it to wait.  That and he purchased it knowing he’d be requesting gingerbread cookies.  

He knows me well:  combine Becky’s love of German Shepherds, dogs in general, and her love of baking….voila, the perfect gift!  A gift that gives both ways too; he’s a clever guy, that one.

Funny enough, a timely email then arrived with The Kitchn’s Gingerbread Cookie recipe, touting itself to be one heck of a rockin’ recipe. 

Well whaddya know, they were not kidding.  

These are hands down the best gingerbread cookies I’ve ever eaten.  They’re soft in all the right ways but not too soft.  They’re not tooth-cracking rocks.  They don’t spread but they do puff a bit.  Best of all, they’re poppin’ with molasses-y, ginger and spice flavor.  And Mike relishes them.  Relishes.

They are…they’re….they’re just so darn good.

If you are cookie cutter-less, fear begone, just slice the dough into squares or other shapes. In fact, you’ll use every last little bit of this deeeelicious dough plus eliminate re-rolling that way. 

Do know that re-rolling the dough amazingly has minimal impact on these cookies.  Ya know how some get worse for it?  You can’t even tell with this dough.

Do know too that the cookie quantity is hard to predict as results will vary based on how the dough is cut.  I get about sixty or so Ginger Finns with this cutter, a whole heck of a lot, and it’s not necessarily a small cutter either.  

Feel free to decorate them with royal icing or however you see fit, or not at all.  I leave our Finns naked mostly because I suck at decorating cookies.  Holy embarrassing, haha.

Got my dry ingredients prepped and ready.

Collect your dry ingredients in a bowl and toss those around with a fork.

Then, in a mixer bowl, toss in the butter and the dark brown sugar.  Yes, dark brown so you know these will be good.  Cream that up.

This is definitely a great start.  Yes, I’m bad, I do measure liquid ingredients in dry cups sometimes.  Tsk tsk, me.  No biggie.

Add the remaining wet ingredients (See?  This is not hard at all!), stir that around a bit.  While I haven’t run into this, it’s possible that things might appear to separate out here.  Don’t panic — the dry ingredients will pull it together.

Whooie, isn’t that pretty with the molasses in there?

Right so then add those dry ingredients, stir and tada!, gingerbread dough!  Smells magnificent too!

All righty!  Dough is ready to chill!

Ok, dump out the dough, split it in two, wrap and chill for a few hours.  Now you can go wrap up in a blanket and chill for a bit too.

When it’s time to bake, roll out a half and cut away using whatever cutter* you’d like, or into shapes or squares as I mentioned earlier.  You can use parchment paper on the cookie sheets but I’d recommend silicone mats* as they’re washable and reusable.

If you know anything about dogs, you’ll see what I inadvertently did here, uh, oops.  Uh, just cut the dough.

 

Because they don’t spread, you can get them kinda close together.  Keep some distance though so air can move properly.

Stay close as they bake as halfway through you’re going to need to spin that sheet around in the oven.  Is it truly necessary?  You could probably get away without doing it but if you want to be the Gingerbread Cookie hero, I recommend doing it, it does make for more evenly baked cookies.

All righty!  Pop those puppies (ahhh, puppy, pun!) onto a cooling rack, let them cool, or try to before stuffing them all in your mouth, and decorate as you see fit.
 

Heh, so cute, heh, sorry, I can’t help myself.

Then sit back, fuzzy slippered feet up, and enjoy the best gingerbread cookies ever ever ever!

Woof!

And by the way?  Yeah, ya know, I had never tried that “toss a piece of bread into your cookie storage” trick before but did this year, and huh, totally works.  Trick validated!

Looking for more fantastic cookie ideas?  Be sure to check out my growing cookie collection here!  Or, looking to catch up on what else we’ve been up to?  Check out our recipes page and peruse our categories!

Happy baking!

Note:  This content originally appeared on Flaky Bakers.

Gingerbread Cookies

Yield

60 cookies (depending on shape)

Prep time

15 Min

Cook time

10 Min

Total time

25 Min

Not only the capstone in holiday cookie, but this Gingerbread Cookie recipe is the ultimate as well.

Ingredients

• 4 cups (480 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
• 1 tablespoon (6 g) ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons (4 g) ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon (1.3 g) ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon (1.3 g) ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon (3 g) baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon (3 g) fine sea salt
• 12 tablespoons (170 g) unsalted butter, room temperature (1 1/2 sticks)
• 3/4 cup (160 g) dark brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup (237 ml) molasses
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon (5 g) vanilla extract

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, add the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, cloves, and nutmeg. Fluff to combine with a whisk or a fork.
2. In the bowl of a mixer, add the butter and brown sugar then cream together until fluffy and airy, about 2-3 minutes.
3. Scrape the bowl and add the remaining ingredients, the molasses, egg, and vanilla, combining everything on medium-low speed. Don’t panic if it starts to look curdled; the flour will bring everything together.
4. Once everything is combined, add the flour mixture about a 1/3 at a time with the mixer on low. Stir until just mixed, a few streaks of flour remaining. The dough will be chunky and possibly a bit sticky.
5. Turn the dough out onto a work surface, divide it in half and shape each half into a disk. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about 2 hours, up to overnight.
6. Preheat the oven to 350° F (176° C) and line one or more baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
7. Roll one half of the dough out on a lightly floured surface to just under 1/4” thick, dip a cookie cutter in flour, and cut the cookies. Place the cookie cut outs on the baking sheet about an inch apart. The dough can be re-rolled several times though if it gets too sticky, refrigerate it for about 15 minutes.
8. Place the baking sheet in the oven on the middle rack for 4 minutes. Spin the sheet around and bake for another 4-5 minutes, until the edges look a bit dry and slightly browner than the rest of the cookie. Continue with the other half of the dough until all the cookies are cut and baked.
9. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool and decorate as desired.

Notes:

Adapted from The Kitchn.

Nutrition Facts

Calories

77.65

Fat (grams)

2.48

Sat. Fat (grams)

1.48

Carbs (grams)

12.95

Fiber (grams)

0.28

Net carbs

12.67

Sugar (grams)

6.45

Protein (grams)

1.01

Sodium (milligrams)

32.58

Cholesterol (grams)

9.20

Please see the "info" section for nutrition details and information about gram weights.

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American

*The German Shepherd cookie cutters, the cookie cutters in general, and the silicone mats are Amazon affiliate links.  Happy baking, thanks!  Please see the "info" tab for more, well, info.