Gingerbread Cookies
Recipe by Tina Conception Diaz
Ingredients: serve 8 to 10 Gingerbreads
3 2/3 cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoon ground ginger
¾ cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
½ cup dark vanilla syrup or molasses
Royal icing
3 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
3 egg whites
Food colors, for tinting
Procedures:
Preheat oven to 325 oF
In a medium size bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and ginger. Whisk well with a wire whip. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar on medium speed. Add egg and vanilla syrup or molasses and continue beating until well incorporated. Add flour mixture and mix on low speed just until combined.
Gather dough into a ball. Divide into two, flattening each ball into disks. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes of until firm.
Using a floured rolling pin, roll dough on floured surface to ¼ inch thickness. Lift dough once in a while and rotate to keep it from sticking to the surface. Dust surface and rolling pin with flour as needed or when dough starts to stick. Dip cookie cutters in flour and use to cut cookie shape. Reroll scraps of dough until all dough is used up. To keep from stretching the cut out dough, use a pancake turner to transfer the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Using a pancake turner, carefully transfer cookies to a flat surface and cool.
While cookies are cooling work on the frosting by placing powdered sugar in a mixing bowl. Add egg whites and beat at medium speed until soft and fluffy. Tint icing using desired colors. Place frosting in icing bag with desired decorating tip and decorate baked cookies. Let frosting dry for several hours before handling cookies.
Note: if you do not have cookie cutters, cut out a pattern from a cardboard. Place over rolled cookie dough and cut using a knife.