Gingerbread People Cookies

Lets call them Gingerbread People, shall we? Or maybe even THE Gingerbread People, like The Village People. Maybe next year my gingerbread people will be village people. I didn’t graviate towards these much as a kid but yowzer do I love this cookie as an adult. A little chewy, a little crunchy with rich flavors of molasses and brown sugar spiced with ginger. Theres nothing better than a gingebread person on Christmas!

Makes: 22 cookies

Serving size: 1 cookies

Cookie dough:

2 cups all purpose flour or gluten free 1 to 1 baking flour

½ cup organic cane sugar

¼ cup light brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

⅓ cup canola oil

¼ cup molasses

¼ cup unsweetened soy or almond milk

Icing:

⅓ cup vegan butter, melted

3 cups organic confectioners sugar, sifted

3-4 tablespoons plain or vanilla non dairy milk

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Add the flour, sugar, brown sugar, ginger, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon in the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk to combine. Add the canola oil, molasses, and milk and mix with a paddle attachment on low speed until well combined. The consistency should be at the perfect place between wet and dry, if the dough isn’t coming together when pressed together into a ball add milk 1 teaspoon at a time until malleable like plato.

Split the dough in half. Roll the first half out onto a lightly floured surface to ¼ inch thick. Cut out the desired ginger people shapes and transfer to the prepared baking dish. Push the scraps of dough together and continue to roll out and cut out shapes to use all of the dough. Bake for 8-10 minutes until bottoms are just turning brown.

Repeat with remaining dough until all cookies are baked. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting add the butter and sugar to a stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment on low to combine. Add milk as needed to loosen it up. It will be like a thick glaze that is thick enough to pipe into the thin line outlining the ginger people. It will harden as it sets, you can set them in the refrigerator to speed this along.

Use a #3 tip or writing frosting tip, or cut the smallest corner of a sealable plastic bag off. Fill with frosting and pipe out your ginger people with eyes, smiles, and outlines as you wish.