Christmas Recipes: Spiced Gingerbread Cookies

It’s finally the holiday season and what is Christmas without some gingerbread! For as long as I can remember, we would either get some gingerbread men or crack open a gingerbread house after Christmas dinner. Over the past decade or so, I’ve trialled many gingerbread recipes; plain, spiced, light, dark, gingery, not-so-gingery, you name it I’ve most likely tried it. When it comes to cookies, I always like to spice things up. This year, due to my hands still recovering from my White Island Volcano adventure, I skipped the gingerbread house and opted for just gingerbread cookies. Here is my 2020 gingerbread recipe (it’s my best version gingerbread cookie so far)!

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Tips before you start

• Gingerbread is easier to make and cut when temperatures are slightly cooler. Aussie Christmas gets toasty hot, I would recommend turning on your air conditioner before you start or you will struggle with moulding the dough. Do not use a fan as this will blow flour everywhere! Yes, I’ve been there and done that. Lesson learnt.
• Make sure to clean out a clear area/space in your fridge to place the dough in. The last thing you want to do is move things around your fridge with a hand full of cooke dough.
• Clean and disinfect an area of your kitchen bench or smooth table top for you to roll out the dough. I find it easier to work with the dough directly on a bench or table surface instead of on some large piece of greased paper. Make sure the surface is clean because you don’t want your cookies to come with some pet hair, grease from last night’s dinner or dust.
• If you are planning to do some patterned icing on your cookies, planning out your designs will help you struggle less later on. I usually use a pen or pencil to trace an outline of the cookie cutter I’m going to use and draw up my designs inside my traced shape. This way I know exactly what will be going onto the cookies and will stop me from panicking on what to draw on the spot. It will also help me plan out the different colours I need.
• If you don’t have baking paper or have run out of it half way like I did, You can used Aluminium Foil as a replacement. Make sure to double layer the foil with the matte side facing up. Use a cooking oil spray or non-scented oil (e.g. vegetable oil) and evenly grease the surface. If you are baking with foil, make sure to lower the oven temperature by 10 – 15 degrees celsius and keep our eye on the cookies as it can burn.
• When mixing colour into icing, regardless of whether you are using plain white icing or not, always leave a small bowl of plain white icing in case your colours turn out too dark or too intense.

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Replacing Unsulfured Molasses

Like with all my recipes, I like to work with organic and natural ingredients when I can. I’m lucky my local organic food store has organic unsulfured molasses, but regular, unsulfured molasses work the same if you can’t find it. Ensure you choose unsulfured molasses as this type of molasses hasn’t been treated with sulphur dioxide during its preservation stage. Molasses that has been through that chemical process will have a chemical aftertaste. Don’t choose molasses darker than medium (light is best but organic molasses can be darker) as it will be too bitter.

If you don’t have molasses or can’t access some or plain old, don’t like the taste, you can replace it will Maple syrup or honey. Just use the same amount of it as you would molasses. They will vary the taste of the cookie slightly. If honey is the chosen one, add a little more spice to add flavour—approximately half teaspoon more of everything excluding pepper, paprika and cyan pepper.

The Gingerbread

This recipe is designed for making a gingerbread man or Christmas themed cookie. It’s on the softer side so it’s not suitable for making as house. The cookie base itself is not too sweet so it can be served straight to those who don’t have a sweet tooth. If you have a sweet tooth like me, I would recommend putting some royal icing on your gingerbread.

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Things you need:

• 110g of room temperature butter
• 1/4 cup and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar (use light brown sugar for a lighter coloured cookie)
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup of unsulfured molasses
• 2 3/4 cups of shifted plain or all-purpose flour (you will need additional table spoon or so of flour for dusting)
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
• 3 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
• 2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon of all spice
• 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon of cyan pepper powder (this can be removed if you don’t want as much of a heat kick in your cookies)
• 1/2 teaspoon of paprika powder
• 1 teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt (or us can use normal sea salt)

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Making Gingerbread

1. In a mixing bowl, add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ground ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves, all spice, pepper, cyan pepper powder, paprika powder, and salt (see about images). Use a whisk to stir all ingredients together until everything is evenly combined. Be gentle when mixing as you do not want flour and spices flying everywhere. When done, divide the mixture into four roughly equal portions.
2. In a stand mixer bowl, beat butter and brown sugar at medium speed until batter is fluffy and well combined. Make sure to pause and use a spatular to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times to ensure no butter or sugar is left unmixed.
3. Add egg and molasses to the butter and sugar batter. Beat at medium speed until everything is evenly combined. Make sure to pause and use a spatular to scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times to ensure everything is well mixed. (see about images)
4. Pour in one-quarter of the dry ingredients to the wet batter. Use a spatular to mix everything until there is no visible flour or spice powder. Repeat with the remaining three-quarter portions of dry ingredients. The mixture will get harder to stir and combine as more dry ingredients are added to the bowl. When mixing in the last dry ingredient portion, a soft dough should start to form. As you get to the end and begin to see the last traces of flour and spice powder almost completely mixed in, use your hands to knead until a dough forms with no visible flour and spice. (see below images)
5. Divide dough in half and pat each dough into rectangular disks about 2cm thick. Wrap each in Clingfilm and refrigerate until well chilled. Approximately 1-2 hour (depending on the refrigerator). The chilled dough should be firm but not rock solid.
6. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line 2 large baking sheets with parchment/baking paper (if you don’t have baking paper see tips section for foil instructions)
7. Lightly flour the work surface and roll out one of the doughs evenly to about 0.5cm – 0.7cm thick with a floured rolling pin. Use the selected cookie cutter to cut out the desired shapes and transfer the cut cookie dough onto the paper-covered baking sheet. Repeat this the other chilled dough portion. Any remaining dough can be rerolled and cut. If the dough softens too much to shape, re-chill it in the refrigerator before re-rolling. (see below images)
8. Bake cookies for approximately 8-10 minutes, or until cookies are crisp or slightly golden around the edges and top. Remove from oven and let them cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
9. Pack cooled cookies into an airtight container or line them up for icing once they have cooled to room temperature.

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The Icing

Royal Icing is my go-to choice of icing when it comes to cookies as it’s easy to draw with and has a quick hardening time. It doesn’t have the floury after taste of fondant icing and doesn’t require forever to dry and harden like buttercream icing. If you are only wanting to add a touch of sweetness to your cookies, I would recommend going for designs with simple line work. If you love sugary gingerbread, I would recommend doing a design with flooding base (where the full cookie is fulled covered with a layer or more than one layer of icing). Personally I like to pick a middle ground and use a combination of line-work icing and flooding in my gingerbread design. This year, with my hands not having their full mobility, I went for some rougher line works of Christmas snow scenes on my cookies. I was also feeling a bit nostalgic about ugly knitted festive sweaters and 80s/90s winter fashion. So my poor gingerbread men has to put up with my intentionally criminal fashion faux pas.

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For beginners or those who want to save time and the guess work, I recommend buying premixed royal icing powder (my go to is Queen Royal Icing, no they are not sponsoring me I just like this particular icing combo) and just add water as per their instructions. Just keep in mind, the more water you add the runnier things get and the harder the icing is to control, so add the water in small bits (1/4 teaspoon at a time). If you want to try making your own royal icing from scratch, the recipe is below.

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Things you need

2 egg whites

2 1/2 cups sifted pure icing sugar

Making Royal Icing

1. Beat egg whites until it thins and becomes frothy (do not beat it until meringue format! That’s overkill).
2. Add in icing sugar bit by bit until everything is well combined and smooth. The perfect consistency for outlining should be when mixture is falling off the spoon in a smooth consistent line and the track marks dropped on the batter below should disappear in about 10 -15 seconds. For flooding consistency (filling in space within dried icing outlines) should be when mixture is falling off the spoon in a smooth consistent line and the track marks dropped on the batter below should disappear in about 5 – 10 seconds. If icing is too clumpy add in small amounts of water (1/4 teaspoon at a time) and mix with a spoon until desired consistency and smooth with no lumps. If icing is too runny shift in small amounts of icing sugar until designed consistency.
3. For icing with colour add drops of gel colouring (one drop at a time) to a separated bowl of icing and mix with a spoon until desired colour.
4. Transfer mixed icing into piping bags and apply icing to cookies. Piping tips can be used for fancy shapes. For lines (particularly fine lines) and flooding work, directly cut the tip of piping bag to desired line width and apply icing.
5. Let icing dry and harden on cookies before storing in an airtight container or Christmas gift packaging for later consumption.

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