Triple Gingerbread Dudes
Last night I succumbed to a Solstice Eve baking frenzy and filled our house with the smell of warm gingerbread.
Generally, I try and hold off any Xmas baking, shopping and decorating until after the Festival of Lights (tonight!!!!) which is the official start of the season in our house.
This year it is even more important to keep the holiday at bay, with so much work to accomplish before Jan 2nd
However, (here comes that justification) yesterday was very productive with JS’s help, so while Ger cleaned up and did laundry, I whipped up a batch of Triple Gingerbread Dudes, Piggies and Ginger Bones.
Triple Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 1c Molasses
- 1c Shortening
- 1c Brown Sugar
- 4-5c Flour
- 1T Ground Ginger
- 1T Fresh Ginger – grated
- 1T Candied Ginger – finely diced
- 1.5t Baking Soda
- 1t Salt
- 1t Cinnamon
- 1/2t Cloves
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Warm molasses and add the shortening and brown sugar.
- Mix until well blended
- Add 1c of flour and remaining ingredients
- Mix until well blended
- Add remaining flour, 1 cup at a time, to form a stiff dough.
- Chill dough and let rest for 8 hours (absolute min. 2hrs, max 2 days.)
- Preheat oven to 350
- Roll out to 1/8″-1/4″ thickness
- Cut in shapes
- Bake for 8-10 minutes, until evenly brown top and bottom.
Notes
These are great as is, or you can decorate them with icing. It's all up to you.
One fun note, if you do use the gingerbread men cutter, you can flip it upside down and make gingerbread reindeer by adding icing.
As a ginger-a-holic, I’m wanting a very, very gingery gingerbread entity. Your recipe only uses a combined total of 3 teaspoonfuls of ginger altogether (or does “t” stand for “tonne”?) I know you like things spicy, as I do. So tell me truthfully — how gingery do your dudes get?
Okay…
t=teaspoon, T=Tablespoon… and it should be 3T total not 3t. (The original recipe used 1t… can you imagine?)
The Ginger Dudes in the photos actually have about 2T dried, 1.5T fresh grated and 2T candied… so they are damned gingery!!!!
No cayenne required to jack up the tongue burn in these puppies (oh, damn… I didn’t make puppies this year).
The only down side is that due to a mild inattention the molasses/shortening/sugar mixture got turned UP not down while I answered the phone and there is a slight burnt sugar flavour too… just too far on the wrong edge of good.