Gingerbread Men

My little guy has been asking to make Gingerbread Men for some time.  He's a big fan of "Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man" story.  How fitting that Gingerbread Men are a perfect Christmas Cookie as well?  Win-win.

We had some of our dearest friends over for an ornament making/gingerbread man making party.  We made the cookies and they left with the baked cookies, some frosting and a few sweet things to decorate them at home. Such a fun time. Win-win-win.

The idea for a Gingerbread Family Kit came from a fantastic book- FamilyFun Homemade Holidays.  They suggested a tin with gingerbread men, frosting and a few decorated mini bags of toppings.  The recipe also came from there too.  It was so yummy-soft, and tasty.

Confession.  I really don't like cake and cookie decorating.  Don't get me wrong, I love a beautiful cake/cookie...I just don't have the patience for doing so. Or maybe I'd rather just eat what I'm baking rather than drool while decorating?  I even took a cake decorating class a few years back, thinking if I learned that I'd fall in love with cookie decorating.  Nope.  I still am not a fan. My favorite way to have gingerbread men is with a coat of buttercream, which I did for some of these.  But, I also wanted my kids to see how neat royal icing is.  I made some and did a (hopefully) passable job decorating. It must have been good enough, as the cookies are long gone.





Gingerbread Men (Adapted from FamilyFun)
  • 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 3/4 cup molasses
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • Pinch nutmeg
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
  • 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1) Combine butter, bwn sugar, eggs and molasses.  Add cinn, ginger, nutmeg, baking soda and 3 cups flour.  Mix in the remaining flower/enough flour to form the dough into a ball that doesn't stick to your hands. 

2) On flouered surface, roll to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut cookies with cookie cutters, transferring to greased cookie sheet with a spatula/pastry scraper.

3) Bake 350 for 10ish minutes or until the cookie is just set and turning just a tad brown. 

4) Cool on .  Frost with your favorite butter cream/royal icing recipe.  Decorate.

Enjoy!


 

They didn't last long. My kids and my cookie monster husband gobbled them up.  Might have to make them again...you know....for Santa.

2 comments:

  1. Fabulous! I don't like making cut-out cookies. I'm a drop or bar cookie gal. I'm sure Santa will enjoy them!

    ReplyDelete
  2. They are really cute! And look so yummy, too. I don't normally decorate cookies either. I think I'd rather just eat them than worry about decorating them!

    ReplyDelete

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