Gingerbread People!

 

Mmmm...I love the smell of Christmas baking. My family used to never do any Christmas baking, but now I want to make it a tradition, just because it makes the whole house smell so nice and warm and cozy (cosy? I always get confused). And of course, we get yummy cookies to eat for days after as well.

These are awesome cut-out cookies, perfect for the holidays. They really hold their shape well (unless you make them really fat by accident, like I did), and are great as gifts.
This gingerbread recipe is originally vegan, but I used honey and milk so it isn't anymore. You can check out the original recipe here. (Love PPK!)

I made some of them too thick and they turned out bread-like, but my parents preferred those to the thinner versions. My sis liked the thin ones. She also had a lot of fun decorating them. (She also took the pictures!)

I found out that the one kind of art I'm not horrible at is decorating cookies! Thank goodness I can do some sort of art.

 

I made a double batch of this recipe here, so I got something like 50 cookies! And that was a good thing because I needed gifts for friends anyway, so yay!

Here is my version of the recipe:

Gingerbread People
Makes about 50 cookies (depending on the size of your cutters and thinness of dough)
2/3 cup canola oil
1.5 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses (I used honey)
1/2 cup milk
4 cups AP flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
spice blend:
1 teaspoon each ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon
3 teaspoons ground ginger (I think I had a bit more...I love ginger!)

Directions
In a large bowl whisk together oil and sugar for about 3 minutes. Add honey and milk. It's fine if the oil and milk don't mix completely.
Sift in all of the other dry ingredients, mixing about half way through. When all of the dry ingredients are added, mix until a stiff dough is formed. Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour or up to 3 days in advance. If you chill longer than an hour you may want to let it sit for 10 minutes to warm up a bit before proceeding.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease your cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
On a lightly floured surface roll the dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick.

[I didn't want to clean up a lot of flour, so I took two large sheets of parchment paper, sandwiched the dough between them, and rolled away. Also, I started out with about 1/4 inch dough, but those came out way too thick for my taste, so I rolled them thinner and thinner as I went. By the end, when I didn't have much dough left, I basically had gingerbread crisps! Though, I wouldn't recommend rolling them quite as thin, as they get softer over time and are better at an in-between thickness.]



Cut out your shapes with your cookie cutters and use a thin spatula to gently place on cookie sheets.
If you are using them to decorate a tree or something, remember to punch a hole in their heads (!) before baking.

 

Bake for 8 minutes. 

Remove from oven and let them cool for 2 minutes on the baking sheet then move to a cooling rack. Wait until they are completely cool before icing.

Icing:
Well, I don't actually have a recipe for my icing because I just eyeballed it. I simply spooned out four or five large spoonfuls of icing sugar into a bowl, added about a tablespoon of milk and a dash of vanilla extract, and then mixed it all up. I think I added a bit more sugar later because the vanilla added a brownish tint to the icing that I didn't want.
Now that I think of it, I think some cinnamon or ginger would have been nice to throw into the icing too. I'll try that next time.

 

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday this winter. Have fun baking!