I love baking all throughout the year but especially around Christmas time, who doesn’t?! (maybe you don’t love baking, but I’m sure you love eating it) The last few years I’ve gotten into making gingerbread cookies. I love them soft and chewy, even just plain with no icing. I wanted to have a recipe that wasn’t full of sugar, but that also was going to make sure these cookies were soft. I didn’t “healthify” this recipe. Usually when I find one, I swap out ingredients to make it a cleaner version. There are some things that you just have to leave as is with baking and I feel like this is one of them, which is totally okay! I make these once a year and don’t eat them again until next Christmas. I’m not worried about the brown sugar in them or the all-purpose flour. They’re a treat and they’re festive! I’m not a huge fan of icing to begin with so I kept the icing on these to a minimum, but you can decorate them a lot more if you wanted to!
This recipe took less than 15 minutes to put together. What took the longest was letting the dough chill (I hate doughs that need to chill because I’m so impatient) but it’s a must with this one!
Here’s the recipe;
Ingredients:
· ¾ cup grass-fed butter
· ½ cup brown sugar
· 2/3 cup blackstrap molasses (make sure it says blackstrap and not fancy!)
· 1 egg
· 2 tsp vanilla
· 3 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
· 1 tsp baking soda
· 1 tsp Himalayan salt
· 1 tbsp ground ginger
· 1 tbsp cinnamon
· 1 tsp all spice
· ¼ tsp ground cloves
· ¼ tsp nutmeg
Icing:
· 2 cups icing sugar
· ¼ cup unsweetened vanilla cashew milk
(you might have to play around with those measurements to get the consistency you want and how much icing you want)
Directions:
1. Beat the butter and sugar together in either a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add in molasses and mix until combined. Add in egg and vanilla and beat until all is fluffy and well mixed.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves and nutmeg. With mixing speed on low, add in the dry ingredients slowly just mixing until combined (I did mine in 3 batches) The dough will be soft and sticky.
3. Split the dough into two balls. Place on plastic wrap and flatten into a disc. Wrap up and put in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.
*when ready to bake*
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Flour your surface and roll dough so its about ¼ inch thick. I split my dough into 4 balls to make it easier. Cut into whichever shapes you’d like.
6. Bake for 8 minutes or until the bottom starts to brown. Let cool before removing from baking sheet and let them cool completely before icing or the icing will just run off.
7. To make the icing, whisk together the icing sugar and cashew milk until there are no clumps. You can use a piping bag if you have one, but I use just a small ziplock bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner.
Happy decorating!
-xo Samantha