gingerbread cookies

/royal icing and crunched mint candy cookie/

 

Gingerbread cookies

(from Martha Stewart) 

Ingredients (makes about 80 5-cm cookies)

• 6 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 5 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 230 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1 cup molasses

Directions:

1.  Sift together flour, baking soda and baking powder.

2.  Put butter and sugar in a bowl, mix until fluffy. Add all of the spices and salt, mix until combined. Add molasses and eggs, whisk until combined. 

3. Add the flour mixture, adding three times. The dough will be very dense so you may want to work with your hands instead of a whisk at this point.

4. Preheat the oven to 180*C. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. 

5. Roll out the dough until about 5 mm thick. Using a cookie cutter or a round glass, cut cookies. Collect the remaing dough and roll out again, repeat until all of the dough is used. 

6. Bake for 10-12 minutes, let cool. The cookies will be soft straight out of the oven.
 

/red sugar cookie/

You can dust warm cookies with confectioners' sugar, it will stick to the cookies as they cool. You can also ice them and dust with any kind of sprinkles. I used crunched mint candy and red sugar. Here is the recipe for icing:

Ingredients (makes enough for 80 5-cm cookies)

• 1 egg white
• 300 g confectioners' sugar
• 4 tablespoons water or lemon juice
• food coloring, if desired. 

Directions:

1.  Whisk sugar and egg white until very thick and opaque. It should take about 3 minutes.

2. Gradually add the juice or water. Check the texture after each addition, don't continue if it spreads nicely.

3. Add coloring. Decorate cookies as you wish!
 

 

/snowflake cookie/

 

/more cookies!/