Gingerbread Men

Gingerbread Men! The ultimate Christmas cookie, is it not??

Gingerbread Men

Is it too early to get into Christmas baking? I think not.

And is there any cookie more Christmas-y than Gingerbread Men? I KNOW not! Smells like Christmas, tastes like Christmas, looks like Christmas!

You’ll love these Gingerbread Men. You can actually really taste the ginger and spice flavour. They are lovely and moist inside, and you can make the dough months in advance – super handy to bake up fresh when the necessity arises!

What you need for Gingerbread Men

Here’s what you need to make these little Christmas Gingerbread Men!

Just some notes on a few of the ingredients:

• 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!). Maple syrup is no good, it’s too thin.

• Brown sugar – I’ve used ordinary brown sugar here. Light brown sugar results in a slightly lighter colour gingerbread and dark brown sugar can also be used which yields a richer, deeper brown colour. All are tasty!

• Softened butter – If you want specifics: 17°C/63°F is ideal. It should be malleable but should not make your fingers shiny with grease when you poke it. Your finger should basically be clean. The texture is important: If it’s too soft, this will compromise your cookie dough!

• Large egg – This is an egg that is 55-60g / 2oz, labelled as “large eggs” on the carton (it’s standardised). Make sure it’s at room temperature. Fridge cold eggs won’t blend in well (and also could cool the butter).

• Spices:

  • Ground ginger, of course. We are making GINGERbread men, after all!

  • Mixed Spice is a store bought blend of spices used holiday dishes that gives Gingerbread Men more layers of flavour. Using just ginger and cinnamon as many recipes do is just too one dimensional! Smells of Christmas, hails from Britain, common in Australia but if you can’t find it where you are, don’t worry – it’s easy to make up your own using standard spices: cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and coriander (in recipe notes, and don’t worry if you’re missing one or two); and

  • Cloves are optional but add a nice hit of spice and warmth to the dough.

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How to make Gingerbread Men

Gingerbread Men are made using a soft, generously-spiced cookie dough. It’s rolled out then a Gingerbread Men cookie cutter is used to cut the shapes out. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a Gingerbread Man – you can make any shape you want!

Making the Gingerbread Cookie Dough

1. Cream the butter and sugar, then add egg and vanilla. You can use a stand mixer or a handheld beater, as I have done;

2. Beat in the molasses – it will change the colour to a deep golden brown colour;

3. Beat in the dry ingredients in 4 equal batches. Adding them gradually helps them incorporate more easily; and

4. The dough will be soft and sticky – kind of like clay – and should stick together when you press it together.

Cutting Gingerbread Men Shapes

1. The dough is quite soft and sticky so refrigerate it to firm it up. Do so for at least 2 hours, but you can leave it in the fridge for up to 5 days, or even freeze it for 3 months!

2. Cut the dough in half so you have one half to work with while you return the other half to the fridge to keep it cold.

3. Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking paper / parchment paper;

4. Cut out Gingerbread Men shapes. My cutter is 11cm/4.5″ long. Press down firmly to cut all the way through so they lift out cleanly (though if you have scrappy edges, you can just tidy them up easily on the baking tray).

Transferring and Baking

1. Peel off excess dough from around the Gingerbread Men;

2. Transfer shapes to a baking tray using a palette knife or large kitchen knife. Something long and thin is best to minimise ruining the shape!

3. Place on a baking paper/parchment-lined tray, adjust the shapes and tidy up the edges if needed (I use a butter knife – just press on the scruffy edges to make them neat); and

4. Bake for 12 minutes for light golden and mostly soft (though slightly crisp on edges), or 14 minutes for deeper golden and crisp. The gingerbread men will be soft out of the oven but will firm up as they cool. Note however even crisp gingerbread men soften the next day. I’m yet to discover the secret to keep Gingerbread Men crispy (other than using a drier dough but that just makes dry Gingerbread Men!).

This recipe makes 20 Gingerbread Men using a cutter that’s 11cm / 4.5″ tall. I use 3 baking trays because the flow of this recipe works nicely to fill and bake one tray at a time.

Decorating the Gingerbread Men

The best icing to use to decorating Gingerbread Men is Royal Icing. It’s suitable for piping intricate designs which means it’s perfect for putting smiley faces on our Gingerbread Men, giving them decorative pants / skirts / shorts and gluing on belly buttons etc.

Also, this icing sets hard and so won’t soften the Gingerbread Men.

You can get as fancy as you want with your decorations! The way I’ve piped the icing across the arms and waist in a zig-zag is a pretty classic way of decorating Gingerbread Men.

I use mini M&M’s and silver balls for the buttons.

And yes, I did give him a smiley face. Nobody wants to eat a grumpy Gingerbread Man! 😂 And even through this toughest of years we can all find some reason to smile, right? – Nagi x

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Watch how to make it

This goes down as the cutest recipe video I’ve made all year!!!

Life of Dozer

You wear an elf hat for a photo, I’ll give you a Gingerbread doughnut …. pretty good deal, if you ask me!