Simple Gingerbread Recipe to Cook with Kids (2024)

FAQs

What were some of the early ingredients in gingerbread? ›

An early European gingerbread recipe involved making a paste of stale breadcrumbs, ground almonds, rosewater, sugar, and ginger. English recipes of the 16^th century replaced the stale breadcrumbs with flour and added honey for a sweeter taste and lighter feel.

Some gingerbread recipes require some time to soften after baking because they are initially firm. Gingerbread is made harder by molasses and honey, but it becomes softer when water is absorbed by the sugar.

On floured surface, roll 1 dough disk 1/4 inch thick. Cut with floured 2 1/2- to 3-inch gingerbread boy or girl cookie cutters. On ungreased cookie sheet, place cutouts 2 inches apart. Repeat for remaining dough, rerolling scraps as necessary.

Mistake #2: Not resting your dough

After the gingerbread is cut out, Lomas recommends putting it into the fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to three days. Chilling the dough before it goes into a hot oven gives the butter a chance to firm up and reduces how much it spreads when baking.

Gingerbread often includes spices such as cloves, nutmeg, or cinnamon as well as ginger. Gingerbread can mean a wide variety of foods, from the soft and moist loaf cake all the way to the brittle ginger snap. Gingerbread is popular in lots of different countries, and each region has perfected its own version of it.

According to Rhonda Massingham Hart's Making Gingerbread Houses, the first known recipe for gingerbread came from Greece in 2400 BC. Chinese recipes were developed during the 10th century and by the late Middle Ages, Europeans had their own version of gingerbread.

Chilling the dough makes the butter, and the dough firm up. Also, a very cold, even frozen crust will shrink less during baking. If you think about a stick of butter it makes sense: the cold butter keeps it's shape, When it softens, it spreads and no longer keeps it's shape.

Betty Crocker wins top gingerbread cookie mix.

Resting your gingerbread dough does two key things: develops flavor and keeps the cookies from spreading too much in the oven.

Why is my gingerbread so hard? ›

Extra sugar made this cookie way too hard.

As was expected because of the extra brown sugar, this cookie looked dark in color and took on the texture of molasses. I thought I was going to chip my tooth when I bit into this finished, extra-sugary cookie. It was hard and dense throughout.

Gingerbread cookies should be soft. They should be supple. They should bend to your teeth before the cookie skin breaks and the crumbs fall all over you. They should retain a bit of elasticity, and maybe you can even leave your fingerprints on the cookie if you hold them too hard because you're just that excited.

Safety: Do not eat raw. This is a raw product and must be fully cooked before eating. Ensure good kitchen hygiene and hand washing when handling raw flour and raw flour products.

Another key difference from modern-day gingerbread is that the medieval variety is made with honey and breadcrumbs. These were mixed with saffron and pepper to form a stiff paste which was formed into a square, sprinkled with cinnamon and decorated with box leaves secured with cloves.

1875 story

In the 1875 St. Nicholas tale, a childless old woman bakes a gingerbread man, who leaps from her oven and runs away. The woman and her husband give chase, but are unable to catch him. The gingerbread man then outruns several farm workers, farm men, and farm animals.

Gingerbread, as we know it today, descends from Medieval European culinary traditions. Gingerbread was also shaped into different forms by monks in Franconia, Germany in the 13th century. Lebkuchen bakers are recorded as early as 1296 in Ulm and 1395 in Nuremberg.

Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap.