I’ve never had gingerbread before.

Well, that, or it’s been so long since I’ve had gingerbread that I don’t really have a good conception of what it should taste like.  It doesn’t have any chocolate in it, so I’m at a bit of a loss for expectancies.  Still, I figured it’s Christmas time, I’m totally into baking these days, and it’s time to continue my run of non-chocolate flavors to expand my palate.  Gingerbread is holidays, so gingerbread cookies it is!

But of course, if I want to make gingerbread cookies, I have to get some fun cookie cutters (that’s a rule somewhere).

I spent a lot of time looking for a good gingerbread cookie recipe; so many of the ones I found required something like 5 to 6 cups of flour and all sorts of other ingredients, and I really just wanted one that would be enough to give me a taste for the gingerbread but not leave me with 2 million cookies scattered around the house.  I also didn’t want to have to go out and buy more ingredients.  Luckily, I happened upon this one, which apparently originated from Richard Scarry’s Best Make-It Do It Book Ever.  For anyone who doesn’t remember Richard Scarry, he was the children’s author who wrote many kids’ books, all illustrated with animals.  Lowly Worm is probably his most recognizable (well, for me anyway):

Anyway, there’s your flash back to your childhood for now.

So anyway, I chose this recipe because I had all the ingredients and it didn’t require me going out and buying another bag of flour. ^_^

Like I mentioned before, I haven’t had gingerbread in a ridiculously long time, so I wasn’t sure what to think about the dough when I plunked it in the refrigerator.  I knew the spices smelled right (I got to use some of my gigantic jar of nutmeg, hooray!), but as soon as I added in the molasses the entire bowl went to all hell; I had no idea molasses smelled so sulfurous!  Shows what I know…

At any rate, I was worried, but my worries turned out to be unnecessary!  Check this out:

Even with such a relatively small amount of dough, I churned out about 3 batches of cookies at 12 apiece.  And here I thought I was being smart and making less!  It was a good experience, getting an idea of how many cookies a ball of dough will yield.  Pretty cool!

Overall I thought the cookies were good, just not my favorite flavor.  Although, adding some delicious cream cheese icing to them definitely made them better.

I’d actually been looking for an icing recipe that would taste good, but set well so I could stack iced cookies and would also not melt in the heat (not a big deal now that it’s winter, but when summer rolls around in the south, icing goes bye bye really quickly).  I found one with cream cheese and followed some commentors’ recommendations,  Voila!  A tasty icing (if you like cream cheese) that after sitting overnight set fairly well on the cookie.  Of course, now the cookies I left out for my icing-setting experiment are a little stale.  Should I let the icing set on the cookie but leave the cookie in a bag?  I’m unsure about how to handle that.

Anyway, gingerbread’s good, icing’s good, cookies: GOOD!

Creamy Cream Cheese Icing

Covers…probably about 3 dozen-ish cookies

Ingredients:

• 8oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1cup whipping cream

Instructions:

1. Cream the cream cheese and powdered sugar
2. Add whipping cream and mix
3. Beat until it forms peaks
4. Spread!