This recipe for Gingerbread cookies is delicious, not overpowering with spices and a really nice soft texture. When I was a child my mother would use raisins as the buttons, does anyone else remember using raisins? I wanted to use some but my raisin hating daughter vetoed that idea before I could even get the entire thought out of my mouth. I don’t know what it is with my children and raisins. So if you like raisins, they can be a cute old school thing to use for buttons!
My tip with making these cookies is to make them fairly thick. My first batch wasn’t as thick as they should have been and they were a little crispier than I like cookies to be, I prefer a nice soft cookie. I think the perfect size is somewhere around 1/4″ thick, maybe a little more.
You can be as creative as you’d like with decorating. I used a simple icing recipe to decorate them, but if you don’t feel like making icing you can just buy some at the store. The icing I made was 1 cup of powdered sugar mixed with 2 tsp. of milk, then add 2 tsp. of corn syrup and 1/4 tsp. of clear vanilla.
Cookie Ingredients:
3 cups flour
2 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
Sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl beat together the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer on medium until light and fluffy.
Beat in the molasses, egg, and vanilla until well combined.
Gradually beat in the flour mixture on low speed until combined.
Press the dough together and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least four hours.
On a floured board roll out about half the dough and start cutting out your gingerbread men. Re-flour the board and roll out the remaining scraps of dough and continue cutting out cookies.
Place the cookies on an un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 8 – 10 minutes or until they are just starting to brown.
Remove from the cookie sheets and let cool on a wire rack.
Have some fun and decorate! Make sure to eat the ones that aren’t “perfect”.
