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decorated gingerbread cookies for Christmas
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Soft Gingerbread Cookies

These soft gingerbread cookies are a traditional Christmas cookie recipe that is perfect for the holidays!
Course Dessert
Prep Time 1 hour 25 minutes
Cook Time 50 minutes
Total Time 2 hours 15 minutes
Servings 18

Ingredients

Cookies

  • 3/4 c Butter softened
  • 1 c Light brown sugar packed
  • 1 Egg
  • 3/4 c Molasses
  • 4 c All-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp Baking soda
  • 3 tsp Ground ginger
  • 2 tsp Ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp Ground cloves
  • ½ tsp Allspice
  • 1/4 tsp Salt

Royal Icing

Instructions

  • In the bowl of your mixer add butter and sugar. Cream together until fluffy.
  • Add molasses and egg to the butter mixture and continue mixing until molasses is fully incorporated.
  • In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and salt.
  • Add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl 1 cup at a time until the dough comes together and the flour is fully mixed in.
  • Remove dough from the mixer, cut in half, and pat into two disks. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
  • Right before dough has finished chilling preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  • After an hour remove dough from the refrigerator and roll out to ¼” thickness.
  • Using your cookies cutters cut out your cookies. Place each cut out on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Press dough scraps back together and roll out again until all of the dough is used.
  • Bake for 8-10 minutes. Or until the edges of your cookies just start to darken.
  • Let cookies cool on a cooling rack.
  • While cookies cool make the royal icing by mixing all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisking until the icing is stiff. You can add water one tablespoon at a time (it won’t take much!) if you would like to thin the icing down for pouring rather than piping.
  • Decorate cookies, let icing firm up and enjoy!

Notes

Note: You can make this dough ahead of time and wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store in a freezer bag or airtight container in the freezer until you are ready to use. When ready to make cookies thaw the dough in the refrigerator overnight and then proceed with the instructions for rolling and baking.