For the holidays, gingerbread cookies are a must, and these spiced gingerbread men don’t let you down with their cheery flavor! This recipe for gingerbread cookies, which was originally dubbed “Eileen’s Spicy Gingerbread Men,” is simple to prepare and enjoyable to decorate with children. For a wonderful range of Christmas cookies, alter the spices to your preference and use any shape cookie cutter.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 40 mins |
| Servings: | 30 |
| Yield: | about 2 1/2 dozen |
Ingredients
- ½ cup margarine, softened
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 large egg yolk
- ½ cup molasses (not blackstrap)
- 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg, or to taste
Instructions
- Beat margarine and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on low speed until mostly incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, another 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in egg yolk, then molasses.
- Whisk sifted flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg in a separate bowl until well combined. Gradually add flour mixture to the molasses mixture, beating until well blended and smooth.
- Divide dough in half and form each into a 1-inch-thick disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 to 3 hours, or overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Working with one disk at a time, and leaving remaining disk in the refrigerator, unwrap chilled dough and place on a lightly floured surface. Working from the center to the edges, roll dough with a floured rolling pin to a thickness of 1/4 inch.
- Cut dough into desired shapes with cookie cutters, dipping the cutters into flour as needed so they don’t stick to the dough. Fit the cookie cutters as closely together as possible to cut as many cookies as you can. This will minimize the number of times you have to re-roll the dough.
- Transfer gingerbread cookies to ungreased cookie sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Gather any dough scraps into a ball, flatten, re-wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate to use for later batches.
- Bake each sheet in the preheated oven until firm, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool while you finish rolling, cutting, and baking the remaining cookies.
- Frost or decorate cooled gingerbread cookies as desired.
- The original recipe called for 1 teaspoon ground ginger and 1 teaspoon ground cloves. Based on reviews, we reduced those amounts slightly in the recipe. However, everyone’s taste is different, so you may want to increase or decrease the amount of any of the spices in the recipe. Some reviewers have even added allspice and ground black pepper for spicier cookies.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 88 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 14 g |
| Cholesterol | 7 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 1 g |
| Saturated Fat | 1 g |
| Sodium | 103 mg |
| Sugars | 6 g |
| Fat | 3 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Wonderful with all spices used! Mine look scared… because they knew what comes next! Delicious!
Our family’s favorite! We make them every Christmas and always get compliments on them.
Delicious cookie! I used butter instead of margarine, and they came out just fine. Thank you for the recipe!
Loved the recipe! We have a traditional friends giving making gingerbread cookies & decorating! I added a “shake” more of each of the spices & it was perfect! The big kids loved the taste of the cookies! Not a single cookie left.
Only gingerbread men recipe I’ve used for years. No others have been anywhere near as good so I stuck with this one when the kids were little I’m still using it. It never fails to leave me wishing I’d doubled the batch, even when I’d doubled the batch! If you just use ginger and cinnamon they taste just like the ones you get from Greggs in the UK.
This has been my go to recipe for years now. We love them. If you don’t add the extra spices and just use ground ginger they’re just like the ones you get from Greggs.
Replace Margarine with butter and it’s perfect.
I make these during the holidays season. I would give them 4.5 stars if I could. I’ve found you can add 25-75g of WPC (whey protein concentrate) to make them less sticky if you don’t want to chill them. I only do 8 minutes in the oven. You can reduce the sugar by about 1/3rd before you start to notice the cookies becoming bland; you won’t notice if you add m&m’s as decoration.
it tasted so good i will use this recipe all the time now
Easy to make and delicious!
Excellent as long as you refrigerate the dough – preferably overnight. (Using molasses requires this step so as not to be too sticky. Adding more flour ruins the taste and texture.) ALSO, remove from the oven on the early side. They may look slightly underbaked, but they will set up as as they cool. (If you bake until they look like other cookies when done, they will likely cool really hard. ) FINALLY, the spices listed were perfect, but since I tend to like major kick, I took the advice of another commenter: I doubled the cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Wonderful!
Excellent recipe! This is the only recipe I use for our gingerbread cookies. I make some a little thicker for a little bit of chewy consistency, and more ginger flavor. Very delicious!
Someone asked if you can use butter instead of margarine: overwhelming yes. That’s the only way I make them, I never use margarine for anything. Now, this has got to be the best gingerbread cookie recipe ever created. I’ve actually had grown adults in my office argue over who gets the last one. I follow the recipe as written, except I use butter instead of margarine.
I’ve made this recipe about 20 times, and they are the best Ginger bread cookies that I have ever tasted! So soft, full of spice and sweet. My only problem is making enough of them to last a whole week in my house, I usually don’t even get a chance to decorate them. I use really dark molasses, though not quite blackstrap, and I add 1/8th of a teaspoon of allspice to round out the flavor melange, but only because that’s the way I’ve always made gingerbread men before now. My son’s love ginger stars so much that we make them year round. Thanks so much for this recipe.
This recipe makes tasty ninjabread men. I did make some changes as suggested by others. I used softened butter instead of margarine. I used 3/4 cup brown sugar instead of white sugar. I halved the cloves and doubled the other spices. Next time I will chill the pan of cut-out men so they don’t blob. We used the Sugar Coookie Icing recipe here.
I made this for the first time this past Christmas. They are a soft ginger cookie and the flavor is very good. If you want something that snaps, try another recipe.
Liked it, but would punch up the spices even more. I like my hermits spicy! I added a 1/4 tsp of ginger, and some chopped candied ginger, I would do that again.
They taste superb but the dough is a nightmare to work with!
excellent even when you forget about the dough in the fridge for two days…
Perfect gingerbread recipe! Easy to make, easy to roll out and soooo flavourful!
Was so yummy!! Everybody asked me to bake more!!