20 Easy Gingerbread Cookie Recipes To Spice Up Your Holidays (2024)

FAQs

What to get to decorate gingerbread cookies? ›

Add color with gumdrops and other candies

Gumdrops are the perfect candy for giving gingerbread men buttons and providing different textures and flavors. Other candies commonly used to garnish gingerbread cookies and houses include licorice, candy canes, jelly beans, and mints.

Something has definitely gone wrong if your gingerbread is bland and doesn't have a distinct ginger flavor. To prevent this from happening, Lomas recommends using several different types of ginger: dried ground ginger, fresh ginger and candied ginger.

Gingerbread was brought to Europe in 992 by an Armenian monk. Through the 17th century, gingerbread was used for religious ceremonies. In the late 17th century, gingerbread became associated with Christmas. Russian bakers prepared gingerbread men and women, usually as replicas of those people attending parties.

Should gingerbread cookies be hard or soft? Soft gingerbread biscuits are ideal. They ought to be flexible. However, they should still be somewhat elastic, and if you hold them too firmly because you're so excited to eat them, you might even be able to leave your fingerprints on the cookie!

Needing to be foiled, gingerbread loves whipped cream. But it also takes to tart winter fruits like a shortcake to strawberries. Poached or broiled pineapple sings alongside gingerbread, as do a few spoonfuls of pomelo curd, garnished with candied pomelo peel.

Add more complex proteins, like malted milk powder and brown butter. Caramelizing the sugar beforehand brings bright notes to your cookies, but you can further expand your dessert's flavor profile by playing with proteins.

Chilling the dough makes the butter, and the dough firm up. Also, a very cold, even frozen crust will shrink less during baking. If you think about a stick of butter it makes sense: the cold butter keeps it's shape, When it softens, it spreads and no longer keeps it's shape.

This technique is classic and simple. Just stir up a batch of easy royal icing (it's our Test Kitchen's favorite frosting for decorating cutout cookies), add it to a piping bag fitted with a small round tip and pipe away! You can use small candies and sprinkles to add more detail.

Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap. Gingerbread. Main ingredients. Ginger root, honey or ...

“It gives all the 'baking holiday cookies with grandma' vibes.” In a pinch, you can substitute maple syrup for light molasses, which may also be listed as “sweet,” “first,” “mild,” or “Barbados” molasses. The light variety might be your best bet for a chewier gingerbread, according to Melanie Bourdon, a chef and baker.

Can you use golden syrup instead of molasses? ›

Golden Syrup

With its golden, amber color, it is lighter than molasses, though the two are similar in their thickness. Golden syrup also a liquid sweetener, so 1 cup of golden syrup can replace 1 cup of molasses. Golden syrup has a unique flavor, so it may alter the flavor of your recipe slightly.

The Best Molasses Substitutes

Honey, dark corn syrup, and maple syrup can also be used to replace molasses in recipes.

Royal icing is what professional bakers typically use for this kind of cookie decorating. It's made with either whipped egg whites or whipped meringue powder along with powdered sugar and water, and it tends to be a little more stable and thicker than straight powdered sugar icing.

Prepare to top your gingerbread house with gumdrops, jelly beans, candy canes and a coating of powdered sugar snow. Whichever Christmas candy you chose, you're guaranteed to have a ton of fun making these sugary creations.