Gingerbread Men

I cannot wait for Christmas! It’s definitely my favorite holiday and I already bought a mini 4 feet Christmas tree for our apartment and put it up yesterday. 🙂 What goes best with a Christmas tree? Gingerbread men! It kind of looks like they’ve been decorated by a little kid, but keep in mind I have no cookie cutters at my apartment and no toothpicks to decorate with! I had to hand cut these out with a knife and wing it with the icing. I adapted a recipe to my liking.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons molasses
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
1.) Cream the butter and the sugar together. Add the egg and mix well. Mix in molasses. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves and salt, mixing until well combined. Chill dough for at least 2 hours.
2.) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
3.) Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are firm and lightly toasted on the edges.

This really is my go-to gingerbread recipe. I like to under bake mine just a bit and let them sit on the cookie pan for a minute or two after they are taken out of the oven. I used a basic royal icing recipe to decorate the cookies with, but they taste marvelous plain! The cookie dough is delicious, too… that’s the best part of baking cookies!