Gingerbread Cookies

This is a rolled gingerbread cookie that holds a sharp edge, tastes strongly of ginger and molasses, and does not spread into a blob in the oven. Aya's version leans on two things most recipes skip: rolling the dough between parchment rather than dusting it with flour, and chilling it flat before cutting.

Both matter more than they sound. Extra flour on the bench works its way into the dough and pushes the cookies toward dry and crunchy. Chilling the rolled sheet, rather than a ball of dough, means you can cut clean shapes straight away instead of fighting a slab that keeps softening.

The dough makes about three dozen. Bake time is where you decide the texture - seven minutes gives a soft cookie, ten gives a snap. There is a simple two-ingredient royal icing at the end if you want to decorate.

Gingerbread men from the same dough

Nothing changes except the cutter. This dough was built to hold detail, so arms and legs come out of the oven the shape you cut them, which is the entire problem with most gingerbread man recipes.

A few things help. Cut the shapes on the chilled sheet and slide the whole parchment onto the tray rather than lifting each figure by hand, because a warm gingerbread man stretches at the ankles. Leave an inch between them. Bake the small cutters and the big cutters on separate trays, or the little ones burn while the big ones are still raw in the middle.

For a face, press currants or chocolate chips in before baking, or pipe icing on after. Icing gives you sharper eyes.

Cut-outs that keep their shape

Three things make a cookie spread: warm dough, too much butter relative to flour, and a hot tray. This recipe handles the second one. You handle the other two.

Roll to a quarter inch. Thinner than that and the edges brown before the centre sets; thicker and the middle stays doughy at seven minutes. Chill the cut shapes for ten minutes on the tray before they go in, and always start on a cool tray. Re-rolling scraps is fine twice, and after that the dough gets tough from the extra working.

Soft, chewy or crisp

Bake time is the whole control. Seven minutes gives a cookie that is soft in the middle and stays that way for days. Nine gives chew. Ten to eleven gives the snap you want if you are building a house or hanging them on a tree.

They look underdone when they come out at seven minutes, and they should. Gingerbread sets hard as it cools because of the sugar in the molasses. Pull them when the edges are firm and the centres still look matte, then leave them on the tray for five minutes before moving them.

Thickness matters as much as time. If your cookies came out hard and you baked to the clock, you rolled them too thin.

No molasses in the cupboard

Dark corn syrup is the closest swap, cup for cup, though you lose some of the bitterness that makes gingerbread taste like gingerbread. Honey or maple syrup work and push the flavour sweeter and lighter. Dark treacle goes the other way and gives a stronger, almost smoky cookie.

If you swap in something thinner than molasses, hold back a tablespoon or two of it and check the dough before adding the rest. Molasses is thick, and a looser syrup will slacken the dough enough to affect how the shapes hold.

Blackstrap molasses is a different thing. It is far more bitter and will make the cookies taste medicinal. Use regular unsulphured.

Decorating and the icing

The two-ingredient icing in step 9 is powdered sugar and milk, and it is the right call for a tray of cookies you plan to eat rather than photograph. It sets firm enough to stack after an hour or two.

For piped outlines and flood work that dries hard and glossy, you want a proper royal icing with egg white or meringue powder. Thicker for outlines, then let it down with water a few drops at a time for filling. Our icing guide covers the consistency test.

Let the cookies cool completely. Icing on a warm gingerbread cookie slides off the edge and takes an hour to work out that it is not going to set.

Storing them and freezing the dough

Undecorated cookies keep in an airtight tin for a week, and they get slightly softer over the first two days as the molasses draws moisture. A slice of bread in the tin keeps soft cookies soft. If you baked them crisp, keep the tin dry and do not stack them with anything moist.

The dough freezes better than the cookies do. Roll it flat between parchment, freeze the sheet, then cut straight from frozen after ten minutes on the counter. Three months is safe. Baked and decorated cookies freeze too, in a single layer, though the icing can pit slightly as it thaws.

More holiday baking

Gingerbread is usually one tray of several. Sugar cookies use the same rolling and chilling logic and take the same icing, and chocolate chip cookies cover the people who do not like spice.

If you are baking through December, cinnamon rolls handle Christmas morning and pumpkin bread keeps for a week.