Soft Gingerbread Cookies
Soft gingerbread cookies are the ultimate holiday treat - spiced with ginger, cinnamon and allspice, and made irresistibly chewy with rich molasses. These classic Christmas cookies are full of warm flavor and stay perfectly soft for days, making them ideal for cookie swaps, festive dessert trays, or cozy nights by the tree. Whether you decorate them with icing, sprinkles or enjoy them plain, this easy gingerbread cookie recipe is one you'll want to bake every holiday season.
Ingredients
For Cookie Dough
- 4 cups all-purpose flour spooned and levelled, divided (493g)
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp allspice
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¾ cup salted butter melted (170g)
- ¾ cup dark brown sugar lightly packed (159g)
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup molasses not blackstrap or sulphured (183g)
Decorating Cookies
- Royal Icing
- Sprinkles and/or small candies
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl stir together 3 cups of the all-purpose flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and allspice. Set aside. Keep the last 1 cup of all-purpose flour aside for later.
- In a mixing bowl of a stand mixer or hand held mixer beat together the melted butter and brown sugar for 2 minutes. It will become thick and fluffy.
- Add in the egg and molasses and continue beating until fully combined.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl while the mixer is on low. You can add it all over a period of about a minute.
- Add the last 1 cup of flour in ¼ cup increments while the mixer is going, just until the dough is soft but not sticky. Its possible you may not need to add it all, or you may need to add an extra tablespoon or so. See Notes.
- Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into two balls that you flatten into disks. Cover each of the discs completely with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour. Alternatively, you can also place it in the freezer for thirty minutes.
- After the dough has chilled, remove one of the discs from the fridge (best to work with one disc at a time). Roll it out on a lightly floured surface to about ¼” thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes of your preference, and place the cookie shapes onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet, spacing about a half inch apart. You can re-roll out the scraps to make more shapes until you have no dough leftover.
- Place the cookie sheet back in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350F while cookies are chilling.
- Bake the cookies on the center rack for 8-10 minutes. When done, the cookies will be matte and not glossy, and they may just begin to brown around the edges. Time will depend on the thickness and overall size of the cookie.
Decorating the Gingerbread Cookies
- Make sure your royal icing will hold its shape for decorating (I have a recipe for royal icing on my website, there is a link at the bottom). If it seems too thin mix in some icing sugar until you get the consistency you want, or if it is too thick you can add a few drops of water. The water goes a long way, add it very sparingly! I've made this mistake in the past and you end up having to add a lot of icing sugar to thicken it back up again 😓. When I pull a spoon full of the icing out of the bowl and allow it to drop back in, it flows from the spoon and only holds it shape on the surface for about 10 seconds before it is totally "melted" back in. You can add food coloring to the icing if you want, but just remember if it is a liquid it will thin the icing a bit.
- Place the royal icing into a piping bag fitted with your desired tip. I used a #2 tip for these cookies, but you can also use a small Ziploc bag - simply cut a tiny corner and squeeze the icing out. It works surprisingly well! See Notes for more guidance.
- You can add sprinkles and candies while the icing sugar is still wet and it will act as a glue to hold them on. Then allow the cookies to rest for about 2 hours so that the icing can harden.
Notes
- The type of molasses I used in this recipe is called "Fancy" molasses (aka Light). It comes from the first sugar cane boiling and it is mild, sweet, and a lighter brown color. But you could also uses Dark Molasses, which comes from the second boiling of sugar cane juices it is richer and slightly more bitter though. Don't use blackstrap molasses which is from the third boiling and it is very dark, strong, and more bitter and has a high mineral content. Also don't use sulphured - this is from sugar cane which has been treated with sulphur dioxide and doesn't taste as good.
- This recipe calls for 4 cups of flour divided. Because flour absorbs water from the environment, if the humidity is high you may have to add more than on a day when the humidity is low. Just make sure that the final product is soft but not sticky. I added the total 4 cups to my batch. If the dough is sticking to your cookie cutters or to the floured surface then you haven't added enough flour to the dough. You can gather the dough back up into a ball and sprinkle more flour on it, roll it out continuing to sprinkle more flour on the top and bottom until the dough is no longer sticky.
- When decorating, it is helpful to hold the tip of the icing bag about an inch above the cookie so you can control the "string" of icing a bit better. It takes a bit of practice, but you will get the hang of it.