Iced Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies
These soft chocolate gingerbread cookies are perfectly spiced for the holidays and not too sweet. They're the perfect cutout sugar cookie for decorating with royal icing or buttercream.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Food Processor or Pastry Cutter
- Rolling Pin and Cookie Cutters
Ingredients
Cookies
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- ¾ cup unsweetened, Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground allspice
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ tsp ground cardamom
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
- 3 tbsp whole milk
- 1 tbsp light or dark molasses
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Icing
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 ½ tbsp meringue powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 ½ - 4 tbsp water or milk
Instructions
Make the Dough
- In your food processor, pulse the flour, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, salt and spices until combined.
- With the processor running, drop in the pieces of butter, one at at time, pulsing a few times until the butter is evenly distributed, and the dough is moistened and crumbly.
- Add the milk, molasses and vanilla, then process until the dough starts to stick together.
- Dump the dough out onto a clean counter and use your hands to finish bringing the dough together, kneading in any stray dry ingredients. The dough should be soft, smooth and supple.
- Shape the dough into a flat disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Roll and Cut the Dough
- Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with sheets of parchment paper.
- On a clean work surface lightly dusted with flour (or cocoa powder), place the disk of dough, and dust the top of the dough with flour, too. Roll out to an even thickness just under 1/4 inch thick.
- Use any size/shape cookie cutters to cut as many cookies as you can, placing the cut cookies 2 inches apart on the parchment lined baking sheets. Gather up the scraps of dough, roll them out again, and continue cutting as many cookies as you can. Using a 2 1/2 - 3 inch cookie cutter, you should get around 28 cookies. Use a pastry brush to lightly brush away any excess flour from the tops of the cookies.Baker's Note: See the tips in the post above for using intricate embossed cookie cutters or cookie stamps.
- Place the baking sheets with the cut cookies in the refrigerator and chill for 20 minutes while you preheat the oven. Chilling the cut cookies will help them to retain their shape as they bake.
Bake the Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake the chilled cookies on the center oven rack for about 12 minutes. With chocolate cookies, it's impossible for their color to be an indicator of doneness. But you shouldn't see any appearance of raw or wet dough, and you should see tiny flaky layers around the edges.
- Cool the cookies for 5 minutes on the pan, then very gently transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely. Sugar cookies are delicate when warm, so handle with care.
Icing and Decorating
- In a bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and meringue powder.
- Add the vanilla and water or milk, and whisk until smooth.
- To ice the cookies, hold a cookie by its edges and dip the top of the cookie in the icing. Lightly shake off the excess icing, then set it right side up to dry.
- For embossed or stamped cookies (like the stars and trees in today's post), just very lightly dip them so the icing only catches on the raised portion of the design, but doesn't get into the cracks and grooves. This way, the design will be beautifully highlighted by the icing.
- Let the icing set and dry for about an hour.
Notes
- Making the Dough without a Food Processor: If you don't have a food processor, you'll need a large bowl and a pastry cutter. In the bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Scatter with the cold butter pieces and use the pastry cutter to cut the butter in until very finely cut and evenly distributed. Drizzle with the liquid ingredients, then use your hands to work the liquid into the dry ingredients until it forms into a soft dough.
- Storing the Baked Cookies: The baked cookies should be cooled completely then stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days. If you won't be frosting and decorating them immediately, freeze the cookies in an airtight container for 3-6 months.
- Freezing the Dough: To make the dough in advance, wrap the disks of dough in plastic wrap, label them, and refrigerate for up to 5 days, or freeze for 3-6 months. Frozen dough should be thawed overnight in the refrigerator. Then take the dough out of the fridge about 1 hour before you're ready to roll out the dough. It should still be cool to the touch when you roll it out, but pliable enough to roll without too much difficulty.
- Sweeter Cookies. Note that if you want the cookies to taste sweeter on their own, you can increase the flour from 2 1/4 cups to 2 1/2 cups, and decrease the cocoa powder from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup.
- Storing the Iced Cookies: Iced cookies should be dried completely for at least several hours, before storing in a single layer in an airtight container.
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