Receta Gingerbread People Cookies
Ingredients:
- All purpose flour - 3½cups
- Baking Powder - 1tsp
- Baking Soda - ½tsp
- Unsalted Butter - ¾cup
- Light brown Sugar - ¾cup, packed
- Molasses - ¾cup
- Salt - 1tsp
- Ground Cinnamon - 2tsp
- Ground Ginger - 1~2tsp
- Allspice or ground cloves - ¼tsp
- Egg - 1 large (or use 1tbsp egg replacer whisked with 3tbsp water)
- For the Royal Icing:
- Confectioners Sugar - 1cup
- Meringue Powder - 1tbsp
- Salt - a pinch
Method:
Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Then stir in brown sugar, molasses, salt, ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground cloves or allspice.
Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl and let cool to lukewarm, about 5~8 minutes. Beat in the egg or the egg replacer mixture.
Whisk flour, baking powder and baking soda in another mixing bowl.
Stir in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well until all the flour is well incorporated.
Transfer the dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet. The dough is quite sticky at this stage. Using wet hands or wet dough scraper, pat the dough into a large disc. Place another parchment paper right on top of the dough and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour, several hours or overnight is truly best for the most flavor and for ease of working with the dough. My dough was in the fridge for about 24 hours and the dough was very easy to work with -- it was not sticky at all and very pliable, almost like play-doh.
When ready to make the cookies. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and sprinkle lightly with more flour on top. Roll the dough to an even thickness of about ¼". Cut the cookies using the cookie cutters. Use a pastry brush to remove any excess flour on the top of the dough.
Place them on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 9~13 minutes, make sure to keep a close eye on the cookies because they might burn really quickly.
Let cool for a few minutes, then transfer them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Make Royal Icing: Combine all the ingredients for the icing in a bowl. Beat until smooth. Transfer into a piping bag (with a small tip) or a ziplock bag (snipped at the corner) and design the cookies as elaborate as you can fancy.