today on sugar spun run i'll be showing
you how to make my favorite gingerbread
cookies hey sugars fun bakers sam here
and today i'm so excited to be sharing
another carefully tested well-researched
and perfected recipe this recipe has
been on the blog for several years now
already it is one of my favorite recipes
and by far my all-time favorite
gingerbread cookie so excited for you to
try this one so let's go ahead and get
started now in a large bowl we're going
to combine one half cup which is just
one stick of softened unsalted butter
with one half cup of firmly packed brown
sugar you can use light or dark brown
sugar for today's recipe and today i am
using dark brown sugar just gives the
cookies a little bit more of that
molasses flavor you'll also need one
half cup of unsalted molasses
add this in as well
now you could absolutely use a stand
mixer for today's recipe but for today
i'm just going to be using my electric
hand mixer
we'll use this to cream together all of
these ingredients
next we're going to need to add one
large egg you always want to crack your
egg in a separate dish
and two teaspoons of vanilla extract and
we'll stir these in and you may notice
at this point that your batter starts to
look a little bit piecy or it's starting
to separate a little bit you might be
able to see some butter particles in
there yeah you can kind of see it here
this is totally normal don't panic if
you see this now let's set this aside
and in a separate bowl we're going to
combine our dry ingredients we're going
to start with 2 and 3 4 cup of
all-purpose flour we'll also add 3 4
teaspoon of baking soda a half teaspoon
of salt now let's add our spices which
are going to make these cookies the best
flavored gingerbread cookies we've ever
had you'll need one and a half teaspoons
of ground ginger one and a half
teaspoons of ground cinnamon 1 4
teaspoon of ground cloves and 1 4
teaspoon of ground nutmeg we'll just
whisk these ingredients together
we'll bring back our wet ingredients i'm
going to give this another quick mix
we'll gradually add our dry ingredients
to our wet ingredients until everything
is nicely combined
all right switch over to my spatula i
don't like to over mix this batter so
once i have most of the flour combined i
like to switch over to stirring it by
hand so as i think you can tell this is
a pretty sticky dough this is totally
normal it is important in order to get
the perfect texture for a nice chewy but
still sturdy gingerbread man and that's
perfectly flavored so we're going to
have to chill this dough which i know is
annoying but just bear with me here i
like to work with half of the dough at a
time when i am rolling it out so i'm
going to take just two pieces of plastic
wrap right here and i'm going to divide
the dough about in half and you can just
see it's much too sticky to be able to
manage at this point
now we'll just wrap this up and i like
to make sure it's all formed together
first of all because that's important
and then i just flatten it into a disk
now this dough is going to need to go to
the refrigerator where it's going to
need to chill for at least three hours i
say at least three hours i usually make
mine the day before and let it chill
overnight all right once your dough has
finished chilling now we can start
rolling it out before we begin go ahead
and preheat your oven to
375 degrees fahrenheit now you'll need a
couple tools here i have a spatula that
i'm going to use to scrape under the
dough as we go i've got my rolling pin a
little bit of flour that i'm going to
use to dust this clean surface and of
course a gingerbread cookie cutter now
let's go ahead and lightly dust our
surface
we'll turn out our dough and i always
lightly dust the top of the dough as
well all right now we'll use our rolling
pin and i like to generally roll these
cookies out to be between 1 8 and 1 4
inch thick cookies that are a quarter
inch thick are going to be slightly more
soft and chewy than ones that are
thinner
and as you can see as i'm doing this
i'll take my spatula periodically and
just scrape under the dough because i
want to make sure it's not sticking to
the counter because that'll make it
really difficult to get those cookies
off the counter
all right this looks pretty good so
we'll take our little gingerbread man
here and i just like to shake them in a
little bit of the excess flour just so
that way the cookie dough doesn't stick
to them we'll start making our cutouts
now we'll take these
and transfer them to a parchment paper
lined baking sheet
and of course once you've cut out all of
the cookies that you can you can regroup
that dough form it all back together and
re-roll it out because you want to make
sure you get as many cookies as you
possibly can out of this dough
all right our first tray is looking
pretty good so we can go ahead and take
this over to our preheated oven where
these cookies are going to need to bake
for about seven to eight minutes now if
your cookie cutter is larger than mine
you'll need a little bit more time if
you're a cookie cutter smaller you'll
need a little bit less time so please
keep that in mind and always watch your
cookies carefully now these cookies are
going to need to cool completely before
we can put any icing on them otherwise
it's just going to melt but while they
cool let's go ahead and start that icing
now for our icing i'm basically using
the same icing that i use on my super
popular sugar cookie recipe it's really
easy to make and it tastes so much
better than royal icing now we're going
to start with three cups of powdered
sugar i like to make a lot of icing
because i want you to be able to
decorate your cookies as much as you
want have fun with it it's great to have
a lot of icing especially if you have
kids decorating but if you want you can
certainly cut this recipe in half today
we are using three cups powdered sugar
though now i always measure out four
tablespoons of milk but we don't always
need that much so i'm going to start by
adding just two tablespoons of my milk
to my sugar we're also going to add two
tablespoons of light corn syrup
and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract
for flavor now i'm just going to use a
whisk to start stirring all of this
together until it's nice and smooth
and at this point i can already tell i'm
going to need more milk so i'm going to
add splash more of that
all right so what we're looking for here
is we want a nice smooth frosting that
when i lift the whisk out of the icing
the drip it's going to form a ribbon and
that's going to drizzle back down into
the bowl that ribbon that forms i wanted
to hold its shape for several seconds
before it dissolves back into the bowl
right now mine's not doing that because
i actually added a little bit too much
milk fortunately this is an easy fix
we're just going to add a little bit
more powdered sugar i don't have a
specific amount for you because it's
going to depend on exactly how much you
over measured your milk you probably
won't make that mistake
all right now this is much more of the
consistency i'm looking for so you can
see the ribbon that falls off of my
whisk it's holding its shape it's not
dissolving right away this is a much
more pipeable frosting it's going to
make it easy for us to pipe little eyes
and buttons on our gingerbread men
without having them just spread all over
the place now you certainly could just
spread this icing over your cookies with
a knife today i am going to just be
putting mine in a piping bag fitted with
a wilton number five tip i like to use a
nice small tip for the eyes and the
buttons and the little clothing details
i'm just going to do about half of the
icing in here for now so as you know
we've only baked half a batch of the
cookies so far and once our cookies have
cooled we can go ahead and start
decorating i'm a really bad decorator so
don't judge me too harshly here
now if you'd like right after you
pipe your icing on your cookies you can
use little decorative sprinkles or
jimmies and you can press those onto the
icing as well you want to do this pretty
quickly after you've piped the icing
all right and that is how you make these
super cute super simple and so flavorful
gingerbread men cookies i hope you guys
enjoyed today's recipe and if you try
this one out please let me know what you
think i always love hearing from you
thank you guys so much for watching and
i'll see you next time
does anyone else like feel bad about
this part
these are so good