It's the time of the year for some major holiday baking! Gingerbread cookies are one of my absolute favorite cookies to eat and make. I love the smell and taste of the spices and the decorating part at the end is so much fun! I had a bit of trouble trying to get my hands on some fancy molasses at the grocery stores. I had to go to 4 different stores coz the others were out of it! I'll make sure next year molasses will be the first thing on my holiday shopping list! I also found a great local store that sells a lot of baking supplies. They have a great selection of sprinkles and confetti for baking...and of course they have some Christmas ones. I bought some sprinkles and tiny gingerbread confetti. They are absolutely cute!
It's been a while since the last time I made gingerbread man cookies so I had to browse around for a recipe. In the end, I decided to try this recipe out. Link I did change the recipe a tiny bit and the cookies turned out wonderful! As for icing, I decided to go with egg white royal icing instead of one that uses meringue powder. Maybe next time I'll try the meringue powder. I wonder if there's a huge difference in terms of taste...
Gingerbread Man and Royal Icing Recipe
Makes approx 1 dozen of gingerbread man cookies
(Depending on size of cookie cutter)
Ingredients:
Gingerbread man
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup of packed brown sugar
2/3 cup of fancy molasses
1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened at room temperate)
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 egg
1/2 tsp of salt
gingerbread man cookie cutter
baking confetti/ candy/ chocolate for decorating
*royal icing for decorating
electric hand mixer
dough roller
*Royal icing
2 1/4 - 2 1/2 cups of icing sugar
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp lemon juice
cake decorating bag
cake decorating round tip (I used Wilton tip #1 and #5)
*Wilton couplers will be useful to have for using more than one tip
electric hand mixer
Instructions:
Gingerbread man:
1. In a large bowl, add butter and sugar. Beat with a electric hand mixer till well blended. Add egg and molasses. Mix well.
2. In a separate bowl, add the rest of the dry ingredients together. (Flour, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and salt)
3. Combine dry ingredient mixture to the molasses mixture. Mix well. Form dough into a ball. Wrap ball with plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for 2- 3 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Lightly flour rolling pin and a clean flat surface.
6. Divide the dough in half. Roll out the first dough on the surface to about 1/4" thick. Sprinkle more flour if needed. Cut dough with cookie cutter and place the gingerbread man on a baking sheet. Leave about 1" space between each cut dough. Gather up the left over dough bits, roll it out and cut more dough. Place the baking sheet in the fridge once its full, and leave it for about 10 minutes to firm it up.
7. Remove baking sheet from fridge and place in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes or until edges are slightly brown. During this time, roll out the rest of the dough, fill the second baking sheet and place it in the fridge for 10 minutes.
8. Remove baking sheet from the oven and place the cookies on a cooling rack. Take the second baking sheet from the fridge and bake the batch for 12 minutes. If there are left still left over dough, repeat the process till finished.
9. Once the gingerbread man cookies are cooled, they can be decorated with royal icing and baking confetti/ sprinkles.
Royal icing :
1. In a large bowl, add egg whites, lemon juice, and sift in 1 cup of icing sugar. Use a electric hand mixer and mix well. gradually mix in the remaining icing sugar. You want the icing to be more on a thicker side than runny. Add more icing sugar to make it thicker and water to make it thinner. The consistency should be like a paste and not so thick that its hard to stir. If its too runny, it will drip out from the decorating tip and it will go everywhere. It will be harder to draw with as well. Cover the bowl up with plastic wrap till use. The icing dries up really fast.
2. Prepare decorating bag with tip. I used Wilton round tip #1 for eyes and mouth, and round tip #5 for buttons. If you have a Wilton coupler, it will be useful to use to change the tips.
3. Fill the bag half full with icing, and seal the opening with a tie or elastic band. Place in a empty tall drinking glass or cup.
4. As soon as I finished the buttons with the bigger tip, I place a confetti on top of each button before it starts to dry. Afterwards, I switch to a smaller tip and drew the eyes and mouth.You can decorate your gingerbread man however you like. This is how I did mine as shown. You may end up with a lot of icing left over from this recipe.
Have fun decorating! and enjoy the delicious taste of the cookies!
No comments:
Post a Comment