Gingerbread Cookies Recipe - melissassouthernstylekitchen.com (2024)

FAQs

Are gingerbread cookies supposed to be soft or crunchy? ›

First, the texture of the cookie needs to be fairly crispy along the outside with a semi-soft, cake-like inside, and like all "perfect" cut-out cookies, they definitely need to keep their shape when baked. Secondly, they must taste sweet but notably spicy, and have a rich molasses flavour.

Mistake #2: Not resting your dough

After the gingerbread is cut out, Lomas recommends putting it into the fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to three days. Chilling the dough before it goes into a hot oven gives the butter a chance to firm up and reduces how much it spreads when baking.

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

From doubling up on molasses to using too much flour, there is a lot that can go wrong. Forgetting the molasses resulted in a crumbly cookie that was light in color. Combining all ingredients at once created lumps in the finished product.

Forgetting to chill the dough.

It's tempting to want to roll out the dough as soon as it comes together, but let it have a little time to rest. Chilling it for at least two hours or overnight gives the ingredients a chance to absorb one another, making it a whole lot easier to roll out the dough without it cracking.

Try using a different type of flour, or sifting your flour before you add it to the wet ingredients. If your cookie dough is too dry and crumbly, it might not have enough fat. This is a common problem with recipes that use all-purpose flour. To fix this, you can add more fat to the dough.

On the day you choose to bake your gingerbread, you will need to remove it from the fridge and let it rest between 1/2 an hour and an hour or so before you start rolling it out. It will feel quite hard but don't worry a little bit of massaging will soften it up and make it an excellent dough to work with.

Silicone mats are a great reusable alternative, as well! But parchment paper is always reliable. Our Gingerbread Men here at Muddy's Bake Shop were baked on parchment, and they give parchment two thumbs up!

Brown sugar is actually a combination of granulated sugar and molasses, so it's a good substitute for molasses. While measurements may vary per recipe, you can generally replace 1 cup molasses with 3/4 cup packed brown sugar.

Molasses – Essential for that deep, rich, caramel-like gingerbread flavour! It also helps hold the dough's shape. Golden syrup makes a great sub, or treacle. Honey will also work, but the cookies will spread out a touch more and not have the same deep flavour (but still very, very good!).

What is the best molasses for gingerbread? ›

Medium Or Dark Molasses

“It adds enough bold flavor and sweet notes with a hint of bitterness to any recipe, which is exactly what you want for making gingerbread cookies.”

But one unexpected error bakers can make is adding too much of a good thing, butter. Although butter generally makes it all better, bakers who go overboard with it are dooming their cookies to a greasy and crumbly texture.

In the United States, molasses takes the spotlight as the sugar source for gingerbread man cookies. The deep, caramel-like sweetness of molasses pairs perfectly with the warm spices of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, creating the iconic flavor profile of these classic treats.

Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don't overdo it when you're creaming together the butter and sugar.

Keep in mind that the longer the cookies bake, the harder and crunchier they'll be. For soft gingerbread cookies, follow my suggested bake times. Allow cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

Sugar dissolved in baking forms a syrup as the dough heats up. Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies.

It's harder to tell when gingerbread dough is golden brown as it's darker. If you touch the top of the cookie and it's nice and dry, the cookies are done.