The easiest gingerbread cut-out cookies ever
bakingwithtradition.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising and linking to recommended products. Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
These gingerbread cut-out cookies are so easy to make. They with the good flavors of honey and molasses and my favorite gingerbread spice, but what makes them special is how easy they are to roll out.
You can literally cut your shapes and roll away the excess dough around each cutter. There’s no transferring of shapes to a cookie sheet once you cut, so you save a step with every single cookie. Guys this dough is nifty cool and it is so fun to work with.
Pair these with the thinner version of my sturdy royal icing, and you’ve got an easy to decorate cookie. This year, there were only about a dozen cookies left at our cookie decorating party because my kid decorators, who are always in charge of icing the gingerbread ate the rest!
I can’t give these cookies a better ringing endorsement than that, so let’s get into it!
Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies
Why you’ll love this recipe
- One pot-wonder: Any time you can mix up a baking recipe in one pan, it’s a good thing, and this one is no exception. Heat up the spices and the sugars in the pot and add the rest.
- No chilling required: Unlike most cut-out cookies recipes, you can use this one right away, no chilling needed.
- Super soft dough: This is the BEST dough for kids to roll out. Most chilled doughs require a little muscle to roll into a sheet, but not this one. It rolls evenly into a nice thin sheet with very little effort, all without sticking too much. It’s almost miracle dough it’s so easy to work with.
- Peel and go: This is my favorite part of this dough. Unlike every other cutout cookie out there, you want to leave space between your cookies. That’s because the dough before baking is too soft to move without distorting. The good part about that is that you can peel away the extra dough, add it to the next bit of dough, and be on your merry way. This saves you a whole lot of time.
Ingredients for Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies
- Molasses
- Honey
- Brown sugar
- Ginger
- Gingerbread spice
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Butter
- Egg
- All-purpose flour
Equipment you need for making gingerbread cutout cookies
- Cookie cutters: Anything goes here from plain round cutters, square cutters to more traditional gingerbread men cutters, stars, hearts, and snowflakes. You can cut this dough in small shapes or giant ones; they all work! If you don’t have a cookie cutter collection, take a stroll to any thrift store; you’re sure to find something that’ll be perfect.
- Rolling pin: Whatever feels good in your hands.
- Parchment: As with all my cut-out cookies, I always roll between parchment for ease of use. The parchment is key here as you will slide the whole sheet directly onto a baking sheet once you’ve cut your shapes and peeled away excess dough.
- Wire rack: These cookies cool off fairly quickly, but it’s nice to have a rack to stack them on as they finish up.
- Storage container: I love the Rubbermaid Take-Alongs 1 gallon size for these cookies. You can stack and store these cookies before you decorate them. In my dry Colorado air, I’ve made them up to a week ahead of time. They also freeze like champions.
How to get the most out of rerolling dough scraps without ruining your gingerbread cookies
You’ve all been there. Rerolling the last little bits of dough in any cut-out cookie recipe can be the absolute worst as you cut seemingly endless batches of the everlasting dough that manages to churn out yet another dozen as the clock ticks on.
When you get down to the last bit of dough, this can be especially frustrating as you may not have enough dough for a full sheet of cookies. I have a simple trick for filling up a sheet of cookies when you’re down to the last bit of dough without ruining the cookies by scraping under them and moving them like you would regular cutout cookies. Here’s how.
- Roll your piece of leftover dough in the center of your parchment sheets: Cut out and peel away the dough per the recipe.
- Peel off the second piece of parchment.
- Smoosh the leftover dough onto the edge of the second piece of parchment. Fold the parchment in half and roll the dough into a smaller chunk.
- Cut out more shapes from this smaller piece of dough. Peel away the excess.
- Flip the parchment onto the first piece of parchment, cookie side down on top of the first piece of parchment in an open space. Simply peel away the parchment. Technically the cookie is upside down, but you won’t be able to tell that once it’s baked. That’s how you get to bake fewer batches when you get down to the last bits of dough.
Gingerbread cut-out cookies
- Total Time: about 90 minutes
- Yield: about 3 dozen cookies, depending on the size of cookie cutters used 1x
Description
This is the coolest gingerbread cookie dough ever! Roll it out between parchment, cut your shapes, and you can peel away the extra, all without sticking, so there’s no transferring of cookies for baking. You’ll save time and get ultra crisp edges every single time on these delightfully spiced honey and molasses gingerbread cookies.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup brown sugar (106 g)
- 1/3 cup honey (112 g)
- 1/3 cup molasses (112 g)
- 1 Tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 Tablespoon gingerbread spice (or 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon cloves)
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 sticks butter, at room temperature (227 g)
- 1 large egg
- 4 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (585 g)
- Royal icing for decorating (use the thinner consistency from the recipe notes)
Instructions
Make the dough
- Measure the brown sugar, molasses, honey, spices, baking soda and salt into a 4 quart pot.
Heat the pot over medium heat, whisking until everything begins to boil. - The baking soda will cause the mixture to bubble up and lighten to a deep toffee color.
Once the mixture starts to bubble up, take it off the heat - Whisk the egg in a small cup and then add it to the syrup, stirring it in quickly to keep it from scrambling.
- Cut each stick of butter into about 10 pieces. Add a few pieces of butter at a time, stirring the sugar until melted. As you get to the last bits of butter, if it feels like it is taking a long time for the butter to melt, put it back on the heat for no more than 5 seconds at a time.
This will help melt those last bits of butter without heating up the syrup too much. The goal is to incorporate the butter and cool off the syrup. If you start with straight melted butter, the cookies tend to get greasy. When you’re done, all the butter will be incorporated, and the syrup should fall in lovely thin sheets off the end of a spatula. 
- Fold the flour into the cooled syrup just until it disappears.
- Turn out the dough onto a counter and squish it together into a ball. Divide the dough into 4 pieces.
Cut and bake the cookies
- Preheat the oven to 325 F (160 C). Have plenty of parchment paper sheets on hand and as many baking sheets as you have.
- Place one piece of parchment down on your work surface. Sprinkle it lightly with flour and then place on one of the portions of dough. Place a second piece of parchment over the dough, and then roll the dough into one thin 1/8″ thick piece of dough.
- Use your favorite cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the dough, leaving space between all of the pieces.
- Roll away the excess dough around the cut out shapes. When the dough is first made, you may need to scrape under it with an offset spatula to get it started.
- Save the pieces of scrap dough to add to the next portion of dough.
- Slide the piece of parchment with the cut pieces straight on to a baking sheet to bake. Save the second piece of parchment to roll the next piece of dough.
- Bake the cookies for 8-9 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet half way through baking. You can bake 2 sheets at a time if you’re quick in rolling and cutting; just be sure to rotate the sheets top to bottom and rotate the sheets 180 degrees halfway through baking if you do bake 2 sheets at a time. Know that you can reuse the parchment as the cookies cool as well.
- If any of the cookies are touching after baking, quickly cut between them with a paring knife as they come out of the oven.
- Cool the cookies on the sheets they baked on, and then stack cooled cookies in stacks of the same shape on a wire rack.
- Continue rolling and cutting the same way, adding on scrap dough to the next quarter of the dough. As you get down to the end of the dough, you may find that you don’t have enough dough to make a full sheet of cookies. When this happens, roll as many as you can from the dough you have in the center of a piece of parchment. Once you peel away the extra, peel off the top piece of parchment and roll the dough in the second piece of parchment, folding the parchment into a half piece. Cut shapes from this little piece of dough and then flip them face down right in the extra space left on the first piece of parchment. The cookies will be technically upside down, but they won’t look that way after baking.
- Store cooled cookies in an airtight container if you are not going to decorate them right away. You can also freeze them at this point.
Decorating the cookies
- Make a batch of royal icing, using the thinner consistency in the recipe notes.
- Fill pastry bags fitted with plain fine tips or ziploc bags with snipped tips with the icing. If you’re working with kids, place a rubber band around the top of the icing to help keep things clean.
- Lay out the cookies onto a paper-covered surface. Parchment paper over a tablecloth or brown paper covering a table both work well here.
- Squeeze out icing into any design you’d like. Have fun!
Notes
**Nutrition data is calculated without royal icing added in.
Make a gingerbread wreath:
- Trace around a dinner plate on two pieces of cardboard from an old box. Trace around a smaller plate on the inside of each circle. Cut out the center of each circle and then around both of them. Hot glue the wreath shapes together.
- Hot glue decorated cookies onto the wreath (a 10″ plate will need about a dozen cookies). Do your best to fill in gaps between the cookies. Making wreaths with one size cookie is best.
- Make a bow with ribbon and hot glue it in place. Hang it on your door with pride. Do know that the royal icing will fall off if the wreath is exposed to snowy temps, but hey, it will look awesome before you get to that point!
Make gingerbread ornaments:
- This dough also makes excellent ornaments for edible ornaments on a tree. Simply cut away a hole before baking near the top of a shape with a 1/4″ pastry tip. After baking and decorating, you can string a ribbon through the hole before popping it on the tree.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 60 minutes
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: German
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 134
- Sugar: 7.7 g
- Sodium: 89.9 mg
- Fat: 5.4 g
- Carbohydrates: 19.8 g
- Protein: 1.9 g
- Cholesterol: 18.7 mg
