Our Favorite Gingerbread Cookies

3/4 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

 1/4 cup molasses

2 teaspoons soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon ginger

2 1/2 cups flour

Melt butter and cool for 5 minutes. Mix into all other ingredients~dough will be thick. Spread in a 10×15 cookie sheet/jelly roll pan. We press the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper first, rolling it as thin as we like it with a rolling pin, and then transferring the whole piece of parchment paper and dough onto our pan.

Bake at 350* for 12-15 minutes.

Cool 5 minutes. Cut shapes!

You can sprinkle with 2 TB sugar before baking.

OR

You can dust them lightly with powdered sugar after they are cooled.

OR

You can be all fancy and fun for your children’s enjoyment and make Royal Icing. Back when I first started making these with the children, we just “zig-zagged” the icing across the cookies, quick and easy! But this year, wow, everyone *loved* piping the outlines of the cookies, from my eleven-year-old Dietrich down to my very capable four-year-old Olivia. The years are flying quickly by! We started making these when it was all I could manage to supervise a 4-year-old Dietrich and two-year-old Claudia do the cutouts (while jostling baby Sophia on my hip), and here we are with fast-growing-up children, quite steady with their hands~and artistic! TIP: Little ziploc sandwich bag with a tiny tip cut off worked great as icing bags for each of them. These cookies are “growing” with us, and that’s the beauty of them. They can be as simple or more involved as you need them to be for your age and stage! {sigh of relief!}

And then, or course, before the icing dries, the children put on their little sprinkles,

chocolate chips, raisins, mini m&m’s . . . or whatever you have on hand.

ROYAL ICING:
2 egg whites
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla or other favoring such as lemon juice or almond extract~just make sure it’s clear to keep the color of your icing white.

Beat egg whites til frothy, add flavoring, and gradually add powdered sugar til the consistency is thick and smooth. Scoop into bags and have fun!

**History: Six years ago I shared this life-saving gingerbread cookie recipe on my blog and titled it “You Won’t Find Me with Other Gingerbread Men”. Since then dozens of you have shared it with friends, thanked me for it, and requested it to be shared again and again. I felt the same gratitude when my sister in law, Lil first shared it with me, saying it was a recipe her aunt had passed on to her. Obviously it’s well-loved, meant to be shared, and helping mamas and children build happy gingerbread man traditions every year around Christmas!