One of my favourite things about Christmas time is Gingerbread.

There is nothing better than the smell of homemade gingerbread intermingling with the smell of just baked sugar cookies, buttery shortbread, apple cider, and a fresh cut Christmas tree. To me, these are the smells of Christmas.

Today I started my official countdown to Christmas… So of course, I had to make some Gingerbread cookies!

There are so may different combinations of ways to decorate your gingerbread, so I split my batch in half and showed my two favourite ways. This one is fun, like a deconstructed gingerbread man, with a little mound of gumdrop buttons in the center, while the photos above show a more sophisticated version, with a little gingerbread heart and red sugar sprinkles. Both are iced with brown sugar butter cream cheese icing.

My problem with gingerbread cookies is that so many of them are SO heavily spiced, that I couldn’t really enjoy more than one or two small cookies without getting a little bit of a stomach ache. I know its strange, since ginger is a natural remedy FOR stomach ache, but I’m thinking it wasn’t so much the ginger that caused my discomfort, but rather the general spiciness of the recipe that my family used, as well as the heaviness of the full flavoured molasses in the ingredients.

Over time, I fiddled with the recipe and found a great way to balance the flavours, yet maintain the cookie’s gingery goodness.

My recipe for softer, lighter gingerbread cookies-

1/3 cup dark molasses
1/3 cup honey (any variety will do, but I prefer oregon blackberry honey, because it is less sweet than most varieties. Also, if you would like a stronger flavoured cookie, or would like to veganize this recipe, you are more than welcome to use all molasses in place of the honey. The resulting cookie will be much darker, however.)
3/4 cup softened butter (Feel free to use earth balance if you’d like to veganize this recipe)
1/4 cup trans fat free non hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon allspice

In a medium size bowl, whip together the molasses, honey, butter, shortening, brown sugar and vanilla extract until fluffy and there are no visible large chunks for butter or shortening. Sift into this mixture the flour, followed by the remaining ingredients. Stir until combined.

The dough will be soft, like a very thick batter. Scoop it onto a sheet of waxed paper and roll into a short, wide log. Make sure all of the dough is covered, and refrigerate for a few hours (I prefer to let it chill overnight) to allow the flavours to fully develop. You can bake the dough before refrigerating, but the resulting cookie will not be as tasty.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and pinch off about 2 tablespoons worth of the dough, roll it into a ball and place it on an ungrease cookie sheet. Place each cookie dough ball about 2 inches apart (on a standard half-sheet pan, you can fit 15 cookies) and tamp down the dough balls with the palm of your hand or the bottom of a drinking glass. The cookies will spread out and become thinner, but if you do not flatten the cookie balls a bit, the centers will not cook all the way through.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes, but watch the cookies carefully, as the bottoms tend to burn quickly. You’ll know the cookies are done when the tops change from a darker brown to a more opaque, lighter brown colour.

This recipe makes about 3 dozen 2 inch cookies.

After the cookies have cooled, you can decorate them however you wish! If you prefer a sweeter cookie, I would suggest either glazing them with a plain sugar glaze (1/2 cup powdered sugar mixed with a few teaspoons of water or milk, until you’ve acheived the desired thinness) or any sort of sweet frosting! Vanilla, orange, almond, and apricot are delicious flavour pairings with gingerbread, but there are many more. Be creative!

I hope everyone out there is having a fabulous time creating Christmas cookie memories!

-A.

P.S. These cookies are softer and slightly chewy. I would NOT recommend using this recipe for complex cookie cutter shapes or for building a gingerbread house. I’m going to try and make a gingerbread house this weekend, so we’ll see if I am able to succeed and post about it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:29 am and is filed under December 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.