Gingerbread Recipe for Eating & Building!

Gingerbread Recipe for Eating & Building

I went on a mission this week to find the perfect gingerbread cookie recipe for building AND eating. A lot of recipes out there are either for building only, meaning they don’t taste great and are hard as a brick OR they are for eating; they are tasty but too soft for building and don’t hold their shape. This recipe is based on a few basic recipes I have used throughout the years but combined and altered to get that perfect blend of structure and taste! I hope you like it… this project was a labor of love. I can’t wait to start building a complicated gingerbread house this year that won’t fall apart! I also added my favorite icing glue recipe at the bottom so be sure to read on.

First, a few of my best tips!

-Flour all your surfaces well. This dough is slightly sticky but if you use extra flour, it’s super workable! The extra flour will bake-off.

-Use parchment paper for larger cutouts. It makes it so much easier to transfer them straight to a cookie sheet without warping your design.

-If you need even more flavor, just add more spices, especially ginger! If you want a darker look to your dough, you can add cocoa powder!

-Do a test batch of a few cookies so you can find out just how thick you want to roll your dough and how many minutes you want to bake them for the perfect cookie hardness.

-Humidity is not your friend when it comes to gingerbread! If you are keeping these long-term like a house, overbake and store it in a dry location. If they are cookies, put them in an airtight container.

(*this recipe is altered from foodmeanderings.com)

Ingredients:

• 6 Cups All-purpose flour
• 1 Tablespoon Ground Cinnamon
• 2 Tablespoons Ground Ginger
• 1 Teaspoon Ground Cloves
• 1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
• 1 1/2 Cups Dark Corn Syrup
• 1 1/4 Cups Packed Dark Brown Sugar
• 1 Cup Margarine

Instructions:

1. Stir together flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
2. In a medium pot, heat the margarine, corn syrup, and brown sugar over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until the margarine is melted.
3. Pour the hot mixture into your bowl with the dry ingredients and mix with a spatula until a dough forms and all ingredients are well combined. The dough will still be sticky at this point.
4. Transfer dough to plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 350F and prepare your work surface and rolling pin with flour.
6. Pinch off 1/4 of the dough at a time and keep the rest wrapped in plastic so it doesn’t dry out. Flour the piece of dough you are working with and roll it out to 1/8″ thick for harder and more precisely shaped cookies or 1/4″ for softer, chewier, and slightly puffed shapes.
7. Bake your cookie cutouts at 350F for 7-20 minutes. I know that’s a wildly wide cooking time range. For tiny detail pieces that are thin, bake for the lower 7 minutes. For cookies, 10 minutes. For large, thicker shapes, 20 minutes will bake a sturdy design. If it’s your first time, you can take the cookies out, let them cool, test the hardiness, and even rebake for longer to harden further. You can check for doughy centers by watching for a consistent color over the entire cookie. If they’re underbaked, the middles will have a darker color. If they burn, they will turn dark brown and then black.
8. Let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring your cutouts to a cooling rack. When they are completely cool, you can start decorating them! I like to eat a few fresh out of the oven when they are still warm 😉

Here are some of my latest gingerbread creations for inspiration! You can also find my recipe for my favorite icing glue below…

Icing Glue Ingredients:

• 1 1/5 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp meringue powder
• 3 tbsp warm water

Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, add the ingredients and whisk on high for 8-10 minutes or until soft peaks form.
2. Add to a piping bag with a very small piping tip and you’re ready to go! You can leave it out on the countertop for multiple days of use.

If you use this recipe, show me your creations on Instagram by tagging me in your posts! @harmonylynngoodson <3

Happy Baking!