It’s the festive season so I suddenly thought of making gingerbread men because I have ground ginger at home, which I hardly use. Gingerbread man sounds like the most apt thing to be baking now anyway.

I flipped my Betty Crocker’s Cookies book and as expected, I found a gingerbread cookie recipe! I tweaked it a bit due to lack of some ingredients but it turned out really good! This doesn’t have a strong ginger taste so it’s good for me, because I am no fan of ginger. It tastes more cinnamon than ginger.

This is really easy and actually, pretty quick to complete too! Except that 1hour of chilling in the fridge that is. Definitely suitable for beginners to try.

Gingerbread Cookies

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

3 tablespoons molasses

1 egg

2 tablespoons water

3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger

Method:

Beat granulated sugar, butter and molasses in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon, until well mixed. Beat in egg and water until blended. Stir in flour, baking soda, cinnamon and ginger. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour or until firm.

Heat oven to 175°C. Roll 1/3 of dough at a time on baking paper (so it will not stick, and it won’t dirty your table) to 1/8inch thickness. (Keep remaining dough refrigerated until ready to roll.) Cut with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

You can decorate with candies at this point, choose to decorate with icing after it’s baked.

Bake for 7 to 10 minutes at 175°C.

Tips:

I have not tried this personally but if you can’t find molasses I think substituting with brown sugar will do. That means 1 ½ + 3tbsp of brown sugar. Brown sugar normally comprises of 10% molasses so the ratio is about the same of molasses: white sugar in this recipe.

Use good butter. I’m using Saputo which is really budget friendly – $4.10 for a 454g block! It can be found at Phoon Huat.

If you like your cookies crunchy, bake it longer. If you like it soft and chewy, go for a shorter baking time. It’s up to you.

You can add whichever spice you like – cardamom, cloves. If you like a stronger ginger taste, add more ginger.

If you want to reduce the calories, you can simply do without icing which is my intention here.