Gingerbread Cookies with Royal Icing
Rolled, cut, and spiced with a full spoon of ginger — sturdy enough to hold a shape and pipe icing over.
- Serves
- 24
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Written
Method
-
Whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
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Beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
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Beat in the egg, then the molasses, until fully combined.
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Mix in the dry ingredients on low speed until a stiff dough forms.
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Divide the dough in half, flatten into disks, wrap, and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours.
-
Heat the oven to 350°F and line two sheet pans with parchment.
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Roll one disk at a time to ¼ inch thick on a floured surface and cut into shapes.
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Bake until the edges are just set and no longer shiny, 8 to 10 minutes, then cool completely on a rack.
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Whisk the powdered sugar, egg white, and lemon juice until smooth and thick enough to hold a ribbon.
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Pipe or spread the icing over the cooled cookies and let set at room temperature, about 1 hour, before stacking.
Notes
The dough needs the full fridge rest, not a shortcut version — roll it while it’s still soft and the shapes blur in the oven instead of holding their edges. Thicker than a snap cookie on purpose: at ¼ inch these stay a little chewy in the middle rather than turning into gingersnaps.
The icing sets hard enough to stack and pack once it’s had the full hour, which makes these one of the few cookies actually worth mailing. Cut dough freezes well between sheets of parchment, so the baking and decorating can happen on two different days.