Best. Gingerbread Men. Ever.

[rj_anderson]

Gingerbread Men
Originally uploaded by rj-anderson

When my son came home from Junior Kindergarten excitedly waving a recipe for making gingerbread men, I confess my heart sank a little. I've tasted many such cookies, and even though they might look cute on the outside, the gingerbread was always so dry and bland that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Besides, who wants to spend all that time messing around with decorations and icing? Not me.

However, this one just said "decorate with raisins", so I thought hm, maybe it doesn't need icing and I should give it a try. And I did manage to find a gingerbread man-shaped plastic mould (it wasn't even a proper cutter -- I got it out of a Rice Krispies box) in my cupboard, so I worked up my courage, followed the recipe, and...

Oh.

Oh my.

You definitely don't need icing for these (in fact the mere idea wounds my soul). You don't need fancy decorations, either. I raided my cupboard for currants, raisins and dried marachino cherries, and a few seconds with a knife gave me all the eyes, buttons and smiles a gingerbread man could need.

And they aren't hard, or bland. They are spicy and chewy and delicious, and the only reason I am not eating the head off my third or fourth cookie right now is because I am heroically restraining myself.

***

THE BEST GINGERBREAD MEN EVER NO REALLY I MEAN IT

Sift into a big bowl and mix:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground allspice

Beat together in another bowl:
1 egg
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2/3 cup dark molasses
6 tbsp. softened butter

Add dry ingredients slowly to wet mixture until well blended. Cover and refrigerate for one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift flour onto your board and your rolling pin as you work to keep the dough from sticking. Roll out a portion of dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut out your gingerbread men with a floured cookie cutter.

Use a spatula to transfer them to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Place 1-2 inches apart. Decorate your gingerbread men with raisins, currants, slices of dried marachino cherries, chocolate chips, M&M's, or whatever you have on hand (kids love to do this part!).

Bake your gingerbread for 8 minutes if you like them chewy. If you like them firmer and crunchier you can leave them in for 9-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Recipe supposedly makes 50 if you use a 2-inch cutter -- I got 27 using a 3-inch one. But they're so easy to make I wouldn't mind doing another batch.

***

Enjoy! And don't tell me you iced them or I will come after you with a wiffle bat, you philistine.

Comments

[yunitsa.livejournal.com]

These sounds a lot like my Amazing Ginger Biscuits that I'll be making for my Christmas party tomorrow - those tend to disappear almost instantly, even batches I didn't think turned out all that well.

Yay for Christmas baking!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I can well imagine these cookies being amazing in any form.

And I LOVE your icon.

[patty1943.livejournal.com]

I printed it out and will try it. When I was growing up we only used raisins on them for decoration. Ours were free form. Frosting must be a later development. (I'm 66)
Are you willing to share the saffron cake recipe? It looks delicious.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Saffron Cake recipe is up now! See my latest entry.

[bittervillager.livejournal.com]

And how can I resist a recommendation such as potential beating with a Whiffle bat if one desecrates one of these cookies with icing?

I'll be making a batch as soon as I surface from the last of the coursework for this master's degree or, as I like to optimistically call it, next Friday.

[ljrags.livejournal.com]

I confess when you posted the pictures yesterday, my thought was much the same. Cute but not tasty. OH GOODNESS! So going to try these and Peacock Harpy's bread this weekend :)

[faerie-writer.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this recipe sounds good. Think I'll try it! :D

[tree_and_leaf]

These sound awesome. I had concluded that giving people baking was the answer to Christmas presents on a budget, and these sound like a strong candidate for those who wouldn't appreciate gin and tonic cupcakes...

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

What on earth are gin and tonic cupcakes? *is diverted by this idea*

[tree_and_leaf]

You make the cake with tonic water, and the icing with marscapone and gin. Then you don't let kids get hold of them *g*

[scionofgrace.livejournal.com]

::is fascinated::

[newport2newport.livejournal.com]

Gingerbread...mmm, my favorite. Well, gingersnaps, if you wanna get technical, but I love ginger cookies of any kind. ESPECIALLY when they're decorated. No frosting, though. Far be it from me to act like a philistine. :)

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, I will have to print this recipe out! HUZZAH, COOKIES. I have also found most gingerbread men to be very unsatisfactory (though Betty Crocker has a recipe for gingerbread cake that is heavenly, so I get my fix there), and the last time I made them they were for Christmas tree decorations and not for eating. (Theoretically. But my girls and I made them all characters from Firefly and then acted things out. I don't know if they ever made it to the tree.)

[meril.livejournal.com]

Strange, I came home today to find that my grandmother had made gingerbread men. And iced them in a way that they look like astronauts on the MOON. Sure, icing is kind of meh, but gingerbread astronauts~!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Gingerbread astronauts are cool! And with many gingerbread recipes, the icing is quite necessary. I just wanted to make sure people knew it would be gilding the lily with this one. :)

[leah-s.livejournal.com]

I just made these cookies and they were AWESOME! Thanks you!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Hooray, so glad they turned out!

[wahlee-98.livejournal.com]

I made these tonight, and they're delicious! My nieces destroyed them. :P

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! Glad you and your nieces enjoyed.

[natalief.livejournal.com]

(added to memories)

I will see if these work with non-dairy "butter" one day…

[fandoria.livejournal.com]

I just finished making gingerbread cookies with this recipe and OH MY GOODNESS! All I can say is thank you for sharing it. They're amazingly delicious.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yay! So glad to hear they turned out!

[keiryou.livejournal.com]

Was very displeased with this recipe, unfortunately. Couldn't see wasting the electricity to bake all of the dough since I had already wasted money on the ingredients, so I ended up throwing 90% of it out!

Other than the unpleasant peppery spiciness and the overpowering taste of molasses, these were extraordinarily bland. Not nearly sweet enough to pass as a cookie, IMO!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

May I ask what kind of molasses you used? If you used "blackstrap" molasses rather than "dark", for instance, they would have quite an overpowering bitter flavour. But with a full cup of brown sugar in the recipe, they shouldn't be bland. I'm not sure where a "peppery" flavour would come from either, unless there was something off in either the measurement of the spices or the spices themselves.

They do taste gingery and rich rather than sugary-sweet, but in my experience that's what gingerbread is supposed to be like. Sorry to hear you were so disappointed.