Kiel’s Famous Gingerbread Cookies

December 23, 2018

Around the holidays we always have plenty of gingerbread cookies around our home. Kiel has been baking them every year since he was a child. It’s a tradition he really looks forward to. There is always a mini competition between him and his mom to see who can make the tastier gingerbread cookie. I won’t say who the winner is but I will say that the cookies never last long around here.

Today I’m sharing Kiel’s famous gingerbread cookie recipe. He likes his with a little extra holiday spice! It’s fairly easy to follow. The only tricky part is getting the icing to stay soft while decorating the cookies. We used this recipe for the Royal Icing. To make the icing easier to apply we kept putting the plastic icing bag under hot water which helped a great deal when decorating.

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe (makes around 48 cookies):

Ingredients

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
5 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons ground cloves
18 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup molasses
2 eggs
6 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Steps

1. In a large bowl or stand up mixer beat the butter, molasses, brown sugar, vanilla, and eggs until smooth. Kiel usually leaves the butter out for a little while at room temperature. You can also soften the butter in the microwave for no more than 10 seconds.

2. Combine the dry ingredients and flour in a separate bowl. Slowly add one cup of dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the mixer or large bowl at a time. Kiel leaves a half a cup of the dry ingredients out for rolling the dough later. (He uses the leftover dry ingredients to ensure that each cookie retains the perfect amount of spice.) If you are using a stand up mixer start off the mixer on low. The dough gets really thick and can put a lot of stress on the mixer.

3. Separate dough into 3 flattened balls. Wrap them in plastic wrap and leave in the fridge over night to chill.

4. Preheat oven to 375.

5. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

6. Sprinkle left over dry ingredients onto a clean, flat surface to roll cookie dough. Roll dough until it is 1/4″ thick.

7. Begin cutting cookies and place onto baking sheets. Leave at least 1″ space between each cookie.

8. Bake medium sized gingerbread cookies for 8-10 minutes and larger sized cookies for 12-15 minutes.

9. Let cookies cool on cooling rack for at least 15 minutes.

10. Decorate