First, mix up the dry ingredients, which consists of flour, salt, and a whole buncha nice spice: allspice, ground cloves, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and cinnamon.
If those flavors are wrong…I don’t wanna be right.
Next, throw some brown sugar and butter (or brown sugar and margarine) into a mixer…
And mix it until it’s fluffy.
Next, drizzle in some dark, thick, beautiful, glossy molasses…
Crack in two eggs…
Add some maple extract, and mix this all together, scraping the sides of the bowl a couple of times in the process.
Add the flour mixture in three batches, beating well after each addition…
And when you’re done, you’ll be left with this amazing dark brown, beautiful dough. Such a pretty color!
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap (sneaking a couple of bites as you’re transferring it since you have to be sure it tastes good; it’s your duty) and refrigerate it for at least two hours, longer if you have time.
Then, when you’re ready to roll it out, just take it out of the fridge for a little bit before you roll it out. (If you used margarine, you won’t have to take it out very far ahead; if you used butter, you’ll need to give it a little time to soften enough to be able to roll it out.)
When you’re ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and divide the dough in half. Roll out the dough between 2 pieces of plastic wrap for one very important reason: if you just throw flour on the board and roll it out as you would a regular sugar cookie dough, the beautiful gingerbread will be splotched with white and your whole Christmas will be ruined.
Plastic Wrap: It saves holidays.
When it’s rolled out to about 1/3 inch thick, you can cut out whatever shapes you want! When I shot this recipe for my cookbook, I had just gotten this huge cookie cutter in the shape of a house and was dying to use it, but you can do gingerbread men, cowboys (as I did on the show), or basically any shape.
On the show I used shapes like Oklahoma, cowboy, boot, horse, etc. and I got my cutters here. They’re copper and a little pricier than regular metal cutters, but the quality is great and they’ll last a long time.
*Note: The source where I previously found the huge house cookie cutter (it’s about 7-8 inches tall!) pictured above no longer has them. It’ll probably take some searching, but I’m sure they exist online somewhere!
Transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment or a baking mat, then bake them for 12-15 minutes (depending on the size of the cookies), until the cookies are baked through but still soft.
***IMPORTANT BAKING NOTE: If you like a softer cookie, bake them for less time. Keep an eye on them in the oven and remove them as soon as the cookies have begun to set.
Don’t worry if a couple of your cookies have little bubbles. You’re gonna decorate over those!
Speaking of decorating: While the cookies are cooling (and they need to cool completely), whip up a batch of royal icing, which is the bright white, beautiful icing that hardens as it dries, acts as a glue for candies and decorations, and always makes cookies look extra beautiful. Add some powdered sugar to a mixer…
With some egg white (I just let it drip out of the shell, leaving the yolk behind), which is the essential ingredient that gives Royal Icing its perfect texture. Note that you can also mess around with meringue powder if you don’t like the idea of using egg white. (But I like the real thing, baby!)
Then just drizzle in a little milk (or you can also use lemon juice!)
Royal icing is definitely one of those things you need to play with in order to get the perfect thickness/thinness. It needs to be thick enough to hold its shape/stay where you put it (especially when you’re going to use it for details) but thin enough that it will come out of a piping bag or squirt bottle. So just mess around until it’s right!
I like to use a fine tip…and I just jump in and go to town!
Figuratively speaking.
It’s funny, I always used to say “go to town!” as a way of saying “go for it!” But when you say “go to town!” to a country person, they literally think you mean “go to town.”
Many confusing conversations have resulted.
Did you know there are no rules when it comes to decorating gingerbread cookies?
There aren’t.
Gumdrops, peppermints, licorice…anything goes.
Actually, there is one rule…
No two cookies can be the same!
What a fun Christmas cookie party this would be. Just have the cookies baked, the icing made and in piping bags, and the candies/decorations in bowls. Done!
And displaying them is so much fun.
Have fun, no matter what shape you decide to do!
