Gingerbread men, how could anyone refuse these cute little guys during Christmas! They are not only cute and adorable but also easy to make! Even if you’re not a fan of eating them, you can still enjoy their smiles and have some fun!

With the following recipe, you can get around 24 cookies and you will know the purpose of almost every ingredient so that you can adjust the recipe based on your own taste.

Gingerbread cookies are easy to make.

Ingredients

• 150g softened butter
• 3/4 cup (150g) brown sugar
  If you prefer cookies with less sweetness, you can reduce the amount of sugar to 125g. And on the contrary, you can increase the sugar up to 175g.
• 1 egg
• Sweetener: 2/3 cup (200g) molasses and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
  Molasses is the main ingredient that makes the cookies brown. So, if you want your cookies to be less brown, you can reduce the amount of molasses to 1/2 cup and increase the amount of vanilla extract by 1/2 teaspoon.
• 3-3½ cups (360-420g) all-purpose flour
  It depends on the amount of sweetener you use since it’s liquid and it will affect the softness of the dough. So, the more molasses you use, the more flour you should add, and vice versa.
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  If you don’t have baking soda on hand, you can substitute with baking powder—just use three times as much baking powder as baking soda in the recipe, i.e., 3 teaspoon of baking powder here.
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  If you use baking powder instead of baking soda, reduce the amount of salt to 1/4 teaspoon because baking powder contains more sodium than baking soda.
• 1 tablespoon (3 teaspoons) ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon (3 teaspoons) ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• writing icing and cake decorations

You can decorate your cookies with writing icing.

Directions

Step 1: Mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, and salt in a bowl until blended and set aside.

Step 2: Beat the butter and sugar together with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add in eggs, molasses and vanilla, and beat until combined. Reduce mixer speed to low, and gradually add the flour mixture until just combined.

Step 3: Form the dough into a thick disk and wrap it in plastic wrap. If the dough is too big to wrap, you can divide the dough into two. Then leave the dough to chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Step 4: Take the dough out of the fridge, roll it out to 5-6 mm and cut out your desired shapes. Then, place them on the baking sheet covered with baking paper.

Step 5: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and then bake for 8-11 minutes. Baking time should be adjusted based on the size of your cookies, which means, the bigger cookies are, the longer you need to bake. Moreover, the lower time will give you softer cookies.

Step 6: Leave cookies to cool for 5-10 minutes and then you may decorate them any way you like.

You can shape the dough with your favourite cookie cutters.

In addition, I will introduce to you a simple recipe for the icing. All you need are:

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2–3 tablespoons milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Simply mix all ingredients together. If your icing is too thin, add in a little more powdered sugar. If your icing is too thick, add in a tiny bit of milk.

If you love cookies, don’t forget to check the other recipes for Linzer cookies and vanilla crescents.

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 Sources of the images: unsplash.com, pixabay.com