Soft Gingerbread Cookies

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But wait it’s not Christmas?

I know, gingerbread is a Christmas thing and it’s Easter. But the only reason we have Christmas is for Easter. From the nativity to the cross the empty tomb was always the plan. However we were talking gingerbread. So why am I making gingerbread in April? Well quite simply they sounded good and I wanted a cookie to munch on. Unfortunately both of my children have dairy intolerance. My oldest is truly allergic and can only have limited amounts. My son we are hoping grows out of it. However he gets colic if I have dairy. Two to three hours of screaming inconsolable baby is not worth me eating cheese or real butter. But oh do I miss it. So we’re currently living the dairy, citrus, and peanut butter free life to keep colic away. And the amazing thing about gingerbread is, you cannot tell the difference when you use dairy free butter!

This is not one of my own recipes. I was going to start with one of ours but I was craving cookies so I decided I would share my newest favorite cookie recipe. This gem came from Nora Rusev of savorynothings.com. I highly recommend in your spare time you pop over there and check out the massive amount of yummy looking recipes she has available. I easily could lose track of time perusing them.

Double check your pantry before you go to the store

I’m the queen of making my grocery list and assuming I have what I need in the pantry. Double check, always put eyes on what you are going to use first. If you live right down the road from the store or have neighbors with fully stocked pantries you might be good to go. For those of us who live in the boonies; check first! Here’s what you will need:

• Butter (the real stuff unless you’re living dairy free too)
• light brown sugar (dark brown will work, white sugar you can add molasses to but it’s not as good)
• 1 egg
• molasses (not blackstrap- it’s too bitter)
• apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
• vanilla extract
• all purpose flour
• baking soda
• salt
• Gingerbread spice mix: ground ginger, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, ground cloves, ground nutmeg

Not ingredients but things you will also need:

• stand mixer or large mixing bowl and arm muscles to mix it all up
• mat, cloth, or just your counter to roll the dough out on
• cookie cutters of your choosing
• parchment paper or baking mats
• cookie sheets

Next best thing to real butter

So we use Earth Balance butter. They make a dairy free variety that I was using first but it bothered my stomach. So I switched to the dairy and soy free variety that I used when breast feeding my daughter. We were off dairy and soy for a year and a half with her. You think taking dairy out of your diet is hard, try taking soy out too. It’s literally in almost everything! But thankfully this time around it’s only dairy and peanut butter (sigh) and citrus.

You will need 1 cup of butter; that’s 2 sticks of butter. Leave your butter out until it gets soft. Typically I use stick butter, but the store didn’t have any sticks the last time we were there. Your butter should be soft enough that when you press down on the stick you leave a good sized indentation. However not so soft your finger goes all the way through the stick!

You also need 1 cup light brown sugar. Brown sugar is an ingredient you always pack into the measuring cup. So use a spoon, dump it in the 1 cup measure, and press it in there. If it’s a little over the top before you dump it in your bowl no worries, but don’t get crazy and mound it.

Once you’ve got both of them in your bowl, mix them up. Once they look well combined, scrape the bottom good and mix a couple more seconds. This is NOT a recipe you want to mix until the cows come home. Just enough to make sure it’s combined.

Next group of ingredients

1 egg, thoroughly washed if it came from the chicken coop

Molasses, Apple Cider Vinegar, and Vanilla Extract

I got some local molasses I like to use but whatever molasses you find at the store is fine so long as it’s not labeled blackstrap. We like to use Watkins vanilla because of the rich flavor but whatever vanilla you have is fine. Lastly comes the apple cider vinegar. It’s got a very different smell and look to it that scares some people off. Feel free to use your white wine vinegar if you want but you needn’t worry. I hate vinegar. To the point my husband says I’m not a true southerner because I don’t like vinegar based bbq. Blasphemy I know. But seriously you can’t taste it, so for those of you like me, just use the apple cider vinegar. It’ll be just fine.

Measure out 1 cup molasses and pour it in. It likes to stick to the measuring cup so grab a spatula and scrape all that goodness off the sides. Then you’ll need 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar. Once you’ve poured those in, use your measuring cup to crack the egg in and dump that in your bowl. Be safe, don’t crack it straight into the bowl. If you have my luck you’ll spend the next 10 minutes frantically searching out the egg shells that fell in. Or worse yet the egg might be bad and you’ll have to throw everything out! Just crack it into your measuring cup and play it safe.

Mix it up thoroughly but don’t get crazy

And make sure you turn that mixer off if you have to run out of the room because someone drops a barn on their foot! Yes we had a tragedy of the falling barn that took out her foot and baking got put on hold for a while. But when we came back it was time for the dry ingredients!

Pull out another small-medium sized bowl

I’m lazy, I honestly typically skip this step and just add each dry ingredient as I go. But not for this recipe. This is one of those I follow directions on because if you mix it too much you’ll have tough cookies and lots of regret for not pulling out another dish to dirty.

So I started with my Gingerbread spice mix. Add to your bowl:

• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Now if you get in rush like me and don’t notice that the amount of nutmeg is less than the spices above it DON’T PANIC! My first time making this recipe I blew right through this and doubled the nutmeg! Yikes! I almost threw it all out. But I’m stubborn so we powered through and hoped for the best. It turned out fine! So if you like strong gingerbread double that nutmeg! It’ll be just as yummy.

So what’s left to add?

Add 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 5 cups of all purpose flour to the gingerbread spice mix. Be careful when measuring your flour not to pack it in. It’ll make you cookies tough and more dense than they need to be. My Momma introduced me to King Arthur flour several years ago and I highly recommend it. That is all I use now. Mix all of this up good.

Slowly add the dry mix you just made to the wet mix you started with. The trick here is to getting it all mixed in without over mixing it. You want it thoroughly combined without beating it to death. But don’t forget to scrape the bottom and sides!

Look at that yummy stuff

This is why we scrape the bottom good

If like me you didn’t get it all mixed in well don’t fret. When you get ready to roll it out you can hand squish it together some to mix in what you found at the bottom of the bowl. This dough needs to chill for at least 3 hours. So either put some cling wrap on top for a couple hours until you roll it out or put it in something sealed for overnight. I like to put dough overnight either in a gallon ziploc bag or tupperware container just to make sure it does not dry out overnight.

Put it in the fridge and prep your battle space

I like to make sure before I pull the dough out of the fridge that everything is ready to go. For this recipe that means I’ve got 4 cookie sheets with a piece of parchment paper on each. Parchment paper is wonderful! Less mess and easy cleanup. Plus I reuse it in this recipe to separate the layers of cookies in my containers so they don’t stick. Win-win all the way around. Why you ask do I need 4 cookie sheets? I intend to cook 2 pans at a time in my ever amazing convection oven. I could do 3 pans at a time in the convection oven, however I have found I typically only have time to roll out two trays of cookies while the other cookies bake. So two trays in the oven while I fill up two trays works perfectly.

I used to use a cloth and a cloth cover for my rolling pin to roll out dough. However we found these pie mats at Bed Bath & Beyond a while back and they are perfect for rolling out whatever dough I am making. You may notice mine curls up but that’s because it lives rolled up in my pantry to save space. If I’m making something I have to have it flat for I put weights on it to make it lay flat. I love the rolling pin I picked up at my neighbor’s antique barn. It rolls my dough nice and even. I do have to keep it well floured so it doesn’t stick.

Now all that’s left is to pull out my flour shaker that we will liberally apply to keep everything from sticking. Plus when our 3 hours or overnight is almost up you need to preheat your oven to 350 degrees. If you have a convection oven you will need to convert that down 25 degrees so it doesn’t cook too hot. Some ovens have a button you can press to automatically convert the temperature down for convection setting.

**If you chill your dough overnight you will need to pull it out and let it soften up for 10-15 minutes or it will be too hard to roll out.

Ready, Set, Let’s Make a Mess!

If you ever have baked with me you know how true of a statement that is. I cannot cook without making a mess. Just how it goes. So don’t worry how much sugar is on the floor, if the mixer sends a huge cloud of flour throughout your kitchen, if the candy your making explodes when you add the extract (true story with lessons learned) that’s what washcloths are for.

How thin is too thin?

You want to roll your dough out to 1/4 inch thickness for the best results. The recipe calls for you to divide the dough in half and roll out twice. Yeah I tried that and had a massive difference in thickness from one side of the rolled out dough to the other. So put some flour down across your mat, it does not have to cover it completely just a nice dusting. Take your spoon or hands and plop down a good amount on the mat. Don’t worry if it’s not enough you can do this as many times as needed. Sprinkle a little flour on top of what you put down and roll it out. Don’t break out your ruler just eyeball it. Or look at your ruler first and then eyeball it if you have no clue how thick it should be. I did not take a picture of this because I think each time it was slightly different.

Did you notice I have two bowls of dough in my picture? For this recipe it’s not a huge deal unless you make it on a humid day. Sugar cookie dough you 100% need two bowls. One for fresh dough and one for scraps. The scraps go right into the fridge to chill until you need to roll them out. I left mine out the entire time, however if I did not have a convection oven the scraps bowl would be in the fridge. I like to roll out and cut out cookies from the fresh dough first and then knead the scraps dough back together and roll it out again. Just don’t knead too long as it will make it tough.

When choosing your cookie cutters be mindful of their size. If you pick ones that are very different sizes you will need to place them on different cookie sheets. Large cookies cook longer than small cookies. You can easily dry out small cookies by placing them on a tray with large cookies. Same thing for your thickness of the cookies. Just pay attention to what you’re putting together and don’t set yourself up for failure.

I know what you’re going to ask, “How did you get this far with two children under 3?”

Normally I’d say Bluey, lots of Bluey but currently she’s on a Dino Ranch kick. She’s been telling me she sees T-Rex’s everywhere and Tinhorn troublemakers hidin’. And the little one? Currently falling asleep jumping. My oldest is used to being in the kitchen, she has been since she was a baby. This is why my tupperware cabinet always looks like a tornado hit it. A tiny dictator two year old tornado is in it constantly. But it keeps her busy and I can survive the 5 extra minutes it takes me to find something. My youngest is not a happy kitchen helper. So with him there is typically lots of starting and stopping until he discovered he could jump in his jumper. Now we have longer stretches of happy baby time.

But back to baking because we all want to smell gingerbread baking in our houses

So take those cookie trays and put them in the oven! But only if the oven has come up to temperature. Here’s what to remember with baking:

• Small cookies 6-8 minutes
• Medium cookies 8-10 minutes
• Large cookies 12-14 minutes
• You want the dough to bounce back up when you touch it.
• DON’T over bake. When in doubt, take it out!

Let them sit and cool a couple minutes and then take them off the tray and place them on cookie racks to finish cooling so you can reuse the cookie sheet.

Let them cool completely before thinking about icing

If like me you’re done with cookies for the day, then once they’ve cooled put them in a container until tomorrow. Just be careful that they are completely cooled or they will stick together and make a mess when you try to get them apart.

Simple Confectionary Sugar Glaze/Icing

I do not typically decorate my gingerbread cookies all pretty. I take the time with my sugar cookies but gingerbread I just don’t. If you wanted to decorate them a royal icing would most likely work best for you. I just like to give them a quick heavy drizzling of icing and call it good. So here’s what you’ll need for the confectionary sugar icing:

• powdered sugar
• vanilla extract
• water or milk or lemon juice or half and half; I’m using water

Start with putting some powdered sugar in your bowl. Don’t worry about careful measuring with this one. Get 2 cups of powdered sugar in the bowl. I like to add a splash of vanilla extract but you don’t have to add it in unless you want to. This is one of the few things I don’t measure. Just a little splash; somewhere between 1/2 – 1 teaspoon will do.

You can always add liquid but you can’t take it away

I have a bad habit of adding too much liquid to the icing and getting it too thin. Just remember water equals thinner icing. You want about 1-2 tablespoons possibly a little more. You can always add more. It will look like not enough when you start stirring. Just keep stirring and it will thin down as you go. I like to start with a spoon and then when it gets about done I use a whisk to make sure there are no clumps of powdered sugar.

So how thin do I want it?

You want it thin enough to slide off the spoon when you hold it up but not so thin that it rolls right off the cookies. That’s a huge difference in consistency. Start a little on the thicker side, you can add more if you get started and aren’t happy. Especially if you’re going to add food coloring because that will thin it up a little too. I like a thick maple syrup consistency for my icing. So it will roll easily off my spoon but pool on top of the cookie. And honestly every time I make it, I get it a little different.

Let’s get some icing on those cookies… but how?

I do not like having to spend lots of time getting icing off my kitchen counters. So I’ve gotten to where I put a cooling rack on a cookie sheet and place the cookies on top. This allows the icing to drip off the side of the cookie and neatly collects it on the cookie sheet. Then I can stick the sheet in the sink and let the hot water wash it away. It only took me multiple years and lots of messy counters to figure it out!

How to drizzle the icing

That depends a lot on you and how you like you cookies to look. Pampered chef makes this handy dandy tool below to drizzle chocolate on cookies and such. It makes nice thin and uniform lines. You also could use a decorating bag with different tips to get a similar effect. They look very pretty, but there’s not enough icing for me on them. We like some cookie with our icing!

Pull out a fork or spoon and have at it!

I opt for a fork so it can run out multiple places. Get some on the fork, tip it angled down, and let it slide off onto the cookie. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. Stop adding icing when there’s enough on there for you. Or when your Mama takes the fork away because you’re eating more than you are drizzling!

Then all that’s left to do is let them sit until they are set up and put them away. I typically let them set at least an hour. The bigger the patches of icing the longer they need to set up. Then put them in your containers. I like to fill the bottom, cut out some of my parchment paper from before to cover them up, and put the next layer on top of the parchment paper. This helps them not stick together.

Now you have lots of yummy gingerbread cookies to eat. Mine were dessert after babies went to bed and then some the next morning with breakfast. My Granny liked to have a cookie with her coffee in the morning. I don’t care for coffee but every time I have a breakfast cookie it reminds me of my Granny and her sweet tooth.

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