Gingerbread (For Cookies or a Gingerbread House)

LUv 2 BaKE's Note:

This dough is very easy to work with. We use this gingerbread to make our annual gingerbread houses. One recipe makes 3 fair sized gingerbread houses. This is also works excellent for gingerbread people. From Good Housekeeping Dec 94

• Total Time: 1 hrs
• Prep Time: 30 mins
• Cook Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 36

Yield: 36.0 cookies

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon clove
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, heat sugar, molasses, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves to boiling, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from heat; stir in soda (it will foam up).
3. Stir in margarine till melted.
4. With a fork, stir in egg, then flour.
5. On a floured surface, knead dough till mixed. Divide dough in half, wrap half with plastic wrap; set aside.
6. Roll half the dough, with a rolling pin, slightly thinner than 1/4 inch.
7. Cut with cutters.
8. Bake at 325F on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes; cool on a wire rack.
9. Makes about 3 dozen 3" gingerbread people.
10. NOTE: We make houses by cutting out our house design (the 2 sides of the roof, two sides, a front and a back of the house) on graph paper, and then placing the graph paper shapes on the dough and cutting the dough shapes out with a knife.

Reviews

[Lavender Lynn]

Great tasting, fairly staight forward in a complicated way, haha. I like mine a bit softer so I've shortened the bake time to 9 min, they're kinda fragile but deliciously fluffy. I didn't have time to finish baking my other half, so I stuck it in the refrigerator, and warning to future bakers, this is NOT A GOOD IDEA. I was able to salvage it by crumbling into pieces and adding some water and kneeding it back together, but the refrigerator really made it very dry and hard(literally) to work with. Aside from that, this recipe is fabulous. Absolutely wonderful texture. Thank you! [MLP]

[karen in tbay]

easy, quick and tasty - loved the fact that the dough didn't have to chill

[iceitup]

I made this at Christmastime, for houses and cookies. I made the first 2 batches with molasses as stated. It was PERFECT! It was very easy to work with, as the recipe states. It was perfect. When I went to make batch 3, I didn't have enough molasses and used dark brown corn syrup (I found the substitution online) THAT batch was horrible, it was sticky and not nearly as tasty. I threw that stuff out and went back and made 2 more batches exactly as the recipe states, with molasses, and those two batches were perfect like the first two! This has become my favorite recipe. The smell and taste were wonderful and the dough was soft and fun to work with, that warm dough in your hands is almost therapeutic! (Just don't substitute anything, follow the recipe as written!)