Gregg’s Gingerbread Cookie Dough

Over a few years, I experimented and refined several original family recipes.  The result?  A perfected combination of several traditional recipes — this one is now our family recipe. It is the most versatile dough ever with the most amazing fragrance that fills the entire house.

Caution: You need either a lot of will and really strong hands — or a stand mixer.  It’s THICK!

This wonderful, versatile dough can not only be used to make gingerbread men, but also other shapes, like gingerbread houses or gingerbread dodecahedrons. You mean you’ve never made a gingerbread dodecahedron? Oh, well.

Traditionally, gingerbread cookies are decorated with white icing and raisins for features, but feel free to let your imagination run wild with other decorations such as red hots, colored sugar sprinkles, gumdrops, etc. Prepared dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to 10 days.

Set out butter and eggs. Allow butter to soften.
Separate egg whites from yolk. Allow egg yolks to assume room temperature.
TIP! SAVE the egg whites to use in making the Royal Icing.

Warm molasses in a saucepan or in microwave, but do not boil. Remove from heat and stir in butter until melted. Let cool. This is the slurry.

In a large mixing bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and brown sugar. This is the dry batter mix.

Place cooled molasses slurry in stand mixer and start beating at low speed with paddle. Slowly add batter mix to slurry about a cup at a time until all mixed.Very slowly, in stages, add room temperature egg yolks, mixing thoroughly each time. The dough should be a little bit sticky and have a nice dark brown color. When completely mixed, this is the cookie dough and the smell should make your mouth water.

Place cookie dough in a gallon size zip-top bag and refrigerate for at least one hour, preferably for up to 12 hours, or until dough becomes stiff enough to roll out.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350° degrees F. then cut out parchment paper the size of cookie sheets.

Divide dough in half. Put half of the dough back into the refrigerator. (Refrigerate one half while you roll out the other half, so dough is kept cold.)

Prepare a surface and a rolling pin with a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar (not flour) and roll dough out to a thickness of ⅜ to ¼-inch on a sheet of parchment paper. Dip the cookie cutter(s) in confectioner’s sugar and cut shapes, refreshing the confectioner’s sugar on the cutter between each cut. The dough will not spread much, so you can cut the shapes pretty close together.

Remove selvage dough (the dough left over after the shapes are cut out) and place in gallon size zip-top bag. When all cookies have been cut out, immediately refrigerate selvage dough for at least 30 minutes before rolling out to cut more cookies. The less you can handle and manipulate the dough, the better the second batch of cookies will be, so try to minimize the amount of handling you give the selvage dough.

Place the parchment paper with the cut out shapes on cookie sheet. If using raisins to decorate, press into place now.  Bake 12 to 15 minutes until lightly browned around the edges. Remove from cookie sheets immediately and cool completely on wire racks, then decorate cookies as desired.

About 60 regular sized gingerbread men, or a single decent sized gingerbread house, or a few dodecahedrons.

Prepared dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to 10 days.

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High in iron High in calcium High in potassium
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Don’t forget to make a batch of Royal Icing with your egg whites!

I would love to hear any feedback about this recipe.  Did you make it?  Did you enjoy it?  Did you make any adjustments to it?

Hallee

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