Gingerbread Cookies Worth Making

I wish I could say the recipe for these delicious gingerbread cookies is a tasty family heirloom that has wafted down through the mists of time to grace our kitchen table each December.

But, noooo.

The recipe for these seasonal goodies comes from the front of a pair of oven mitts I bought a few weeks ago at the dollar store!

That’s right. Oven mitts. I’m not kidding!

The recipe design on these cute oven gloves caught my eye at the store. It wasn’t until I was home that it occurred to me to actually give the recipe a try.

So with the help of my eager and enthusiastic twin 9-year-old assistants, we made the cookies per the mitts. They also shaped and decorated them with the gusto and excitement of young children at Christmas time.

And wow! They turned out better than any gingerbread cookies I’ve ever made because the flavor of the spices and molasses, especially, didn’t overpower the overall taste. Also, they’re not overly sweet.

They’re perfect with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. And the aroma is heart-warming.

This is a gingerbread recipe I will use again.

Because we all have different cookie preferences in this house, some of the cookies have a chewy texture, while others are crunchy.

To get a crunchier cookie, which I prefer, just leave them in the oven a few minutes longer than required.

We used instant icing to decorate some of the cookies and left others plain, since Hubs and I generally don’t like icing on cakes and cookies.

I made one departure from this recipe. Instead of refrigerating the dough mixture for four hours, as the recipe requires, I left it in the fridge overnight.

Our real mitts were too tired to wait four hours for the mixture to do its thing in the in the fridge, so to bed we went and made the cookies the next evening after school.

Kids Love This Recipe

This is such a fun recipe to make with kids. Apart from the anticipation of how they’ll taste, they can roll up their sleeves and help making the cookie shapes and decorating them.

And they don’t all have to be shaped like traditional gingerbread figures. Some of ours wound up as a masked hero, along with dancing and sort-of dabbing gingerbread figures.

We broke out all the cookie-cutter shapes and also made them in the shape of Christmas trees and stockings, Santas and candy canes.

We used cookie stamps to imprint them with angels, Christmas trees and the words “Home Made.”

This recipe calls for all the usual Christmas spices, such as ground ginger, cinnamon and cloves. You’ll also need molasses.

Preheat the oven to 350-degrees Fahrenheit. Leave the cookies in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

Prep time is 30 minutes, plus four hours for the cookie dough to chill in the fridge … or overnight if you’re too tired to continue.

And by the way, the oven gloves are heat-resistant up to 350-degrees Fahrenheit (177-degrees Celsius), according to the label.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup molasses
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. Ground ginger
• 1-1/2 tsp. Baking soda
• 1-1/2 tsp. Ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp. Ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp. Salt
• Vanilla frosting (optional)
• Food coloring (optional)

Directions

• In a bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
• Add the egg and molasses.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt.
• Gradually add to the creamed mixture and mix well. (The directions on the mitt appear to call for the creamed mixture to be added into the flour and spice mixture, however, I gradually added the flour to the creamed mixture.)
• Cover and refrigerate the mixture for four hours.
• On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to 1/8- inch thickness.
• Cut with floured 2-1/2-inch cookie cutters.
• Place 1-inch apart on ungreased baking sheets.
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.
• Make sure the edges are firm.
• Remove to wire racks to cool.
• Use food coloring to tint frosting or instant icing, which is what we did.

Enjoy!