Name: Julia’s Family Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Total time: 1 h 20 min
Yield: 3 dz.
Ingredients: 5 1/2 c. all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling; 2 tbsp. McCormick® ground ginger; 2 tbsp. McCormick® ground cinnamon; 1 1/2 tsp. McCormick® ground cloves; 1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg; 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt; 1 tsp. baking soda; 1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened; 1 c. packed brown sugar; 2 large eggs, room temperature; 1 (12-oz.) bottle molasses; 2 1/4 c. powdered sugar; 7 1/2 tsp. meringue powder; 1/4 c. fresh lemon juice; 1 tsp. McCormick® pure vanilla extract; Decorations

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Everything You Need To Bake This Holiday Season

Coziest Holidays Ever

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- Hey guys, I am joined by a very special guest today, my mom! Hey mom. - Hi, babe. (laughs) - The holidays are huge in our house. It smells like Christmas basically from November to January. And today I'm really excited because my mom is gonna show me how to make a recipe that's over a hundred years old in our family, our gingerbread cookie recipe. - So do you want to get started? - Yeah, let's do it. - Flour. First we'll start with the ginger. Over the years we've gotten really spicy with our cookies, so you're gonna use two of those. Keep it super spicy. We've changed it over time to add more spices and flavorings for our tastes. And so then next you'll do the cinnamon. - Cinnamon. - Yeah, that helps give it some of the color, too. We like to have the nice dark color on the cookies. - Yeah, I was gonna say, ours are like very dark. - And then the nutmeg. - Okay. - It'll be good and spicy. Then we'll do the cloves, baking soda and the salt, and then you're gonna whisk it together to incorporate it all. - Okay. - Can you just smell that? - I can already. - It smells so good. - I feel like it smells just like our house, when we're making these. Oh my gosh. - Mmm. (laughs) - What's next from here? - First we're gonna move on to the-- - Mixer? - wet ingredients. So we'll do the butter, the room temperature butter is gonna go in the mixer. - It used to be lard. - Yes, grandma's recipe had lard and then it moved on to shortening, and then it moved on to shortening and butter, and we just think butter is better in everything, so we've changed it to just all butter. - All butter. - And then light brown sugar. It used to be white sugar, for the original recipe, but we switched to the brown sugar and molasses. So now we're gonna cream the sugar and the butter together, just to get it all incorporated and a little bit fluffy. Can you see? - I see. - And then we'll go ahead and get the eggs going. - You don't want any shells in there? - I do not want shells. - Thought we wanted like a crunchy cookie, you know? And so we pour this in while it's on? - It doesn't have to be, but I like to do it while it's on, it just kinda gets it going nicely. Okay, I think that's in a really good spot right now. We're gonna add the molasses, which is gonna give it the really rich flavor and the deep, deep color that we like so much in our gingerbread. All right, that's in there. And then we just finish that up, - Okay. - with the mixer. Okay so we'll get this scraped down and then we're gonna go ahead and add in your flour mixture. So back in the day, grandma didn't have a mixer, so she was just doing this by hand. I can't imagine trying to mix all this in by hand. - Okay, so-- - We aren't gonna do it while it's running, 'cause it'll be a huge mess, but we'll put about half in and then we'll-- - Got it. - I have faith. - I'm so good at this. Oh no. - Oh no. Oh! - No? - No, no, that, you're good. (laughs) - I can't look at you while I do this. - Okay, stop. - Was that too much? - No, no, we'll do a little bit, 'cause otherwise we'll have a huge cloud, like this. - So that's my fault? - Nope, no, no, no. That would be your fault, okay. - Okay, more? - All right, you can do like half of that, and then we'll do another half. - Half of this. Okay, putting that in. - It'll be fine, yeah. - That seems good, right there. - Little bit more. - Little bit more? - This is gonna be a cloud. (laughs) Well, this is fun. We could do this, we could do this. (laughs) - I'm gonna say, you know, it's your fault. - It probably is somehow. But look, look how it came together, it looks really good, on the positive side. - Okay, you just clean it. - Look, we're set. Look how beautiful that is. - It does look very beautiful, this, this is like art. - Okay so now we're just gonna get this all put together and we'll refrigerate it for a little bit before we roll it out. - And by the magic of TV, this kitchen is miraculously clean. And the dough has been chilled. - Next we're gonna roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper. - Does that work? - Yeah, that works good. - I'll take that from you. - And then you're probably gonna have to work from the center a little bit so you don't get off balance with this. But do you want to give this a go? - Okay. Should I go the other way now? - Sure, whatever way, you're gonna end up filling this whole area, basically, with cookie dough. - Oh! I do have to say, I didn't realize how much work went into making these. So obviously this recipe's over a hundred years old, it wasn't just grandma making the recipe. Who taught her how to make it? - Well, it was her mom, so my grandmother, your great grandmother. - Okay. Whose family is from the Netherlands, made the recipe, who kind of adapted the ingredients over time, - Right - But the basic method and the flavors are pretty true to form. It always makes me feel good that you guys are willing to still participate in this at your post-college years, and I feel like you kind of look forward to it, maybe, you think? - Oh, 100%. - Oh, good. - I feel like so many people are like "ah, I don't wanna do that stuff any more." I'm like, oh for me, that's so much fun with my family. - Yeah. - Well this looks like it's just about there. - I think we're pretty, yeah, I think so. - That was nice team work. - Yeah. (laughs) - Okay, I'm gonna go put this in the freezer. And then we can start doing the cutting. - All right. - Now that they're out of the freezer, - Perfect! - We're ready to go, right? - First thing you're gonna wanna do is-- - Peel back? - You're gonna peel back the layer but then you're gonna put it back on, 'cause this is gonna be the bottom. - And then you flip it? - Then you flip it. - Okay. - And then now we're done with this part of it. - So what do we have for choices? - We have snowflake, the mitten, and I'm pretty sure this is your favorite, - That is my favorite. - The candy cane. I immediately am just gonna give that one to you. I like the snowflake the most, 'cause I feel like you can get some really cool designs in. - You're just gonna go ahead and cut out as many as you can, and we'll transfer them to the sheet, and then they'll be ready to go right in the oven. And they won't spread too much 'cause the dough is frozen. - Oh! - See, they come up pretty well. - Wow, yeah. And then how long do you bake it for? - Probably about ten minutes or so, at 350 but you have to watch them just, you want them so that they're firm but they're not browned around the edges. - Okay. - So those will be ready to go in, and then we can pop this back in the freezer - And re-roll. - or we can do another sheet. - I see, this is so cute! - And bake 'em at the same time. - Good luck in there! All right, the cookies are in the oven, it smells amazing in here, so while that's going, shall we get the icing going? - Absolutely. - Okay. - So we'll start with confectioner's sugar. - So what kind of icing are we making? - So this is royal icing, but it's kind of our version of royal icing, where we've added lemon juice to it, which most of them have water. So we have lemon juice, vanilla, and some meringue powder with it to help give it some stability. - The lemon juice is what makes it really good. - Right. Yeah, most royal icings don't have, they just taste like sugar. This is gonna go for 10 minutes. - Oh, for a while. - Yeah, it's gonna go for a little while. But it helps with the, everything get together and then it makes it hard nicely for the cookies. - I see. (machine whirring) So we've been using bottles now, because my brother and I used to just start straight up eating the icing out of little bowls like this, and then we would also lick the paintbrushes as we were painting the cookies. And we'd go back and forth of licking the paintbrush, painting the cookies, and then at the end of the night, - You had your own trays of cookies. - We had our own trays of cookies because we had one year, I think where we accidentally, you guys accidentally ate our licked cookies. (laughs) and you were like these are different. - Yeah. - Just gotta double check here, make sure this is up to standards. Checks out. - Good, good. (laughs) - And I'm gonna grab the cookies out of the oven, one second. Ooh, these look so pretty! - Mmm. - That smells so good. So then we usually would have these sit for how long before-- - Just 'til they're cool to the touch. - Just cool to the touch, then the icing doesn't melt everywhere. - Right. - Okay, which one do we wanna start with? - I want my candy cane. - What's your strategy? - My strategy is to make it angled so it actually looks like a candy cane but I always get going the wrong direction at first. - There we go. - Wow. I don't know, I feel like I need a little green on mine in the center, just to somehow be in competition with you. (laughs) - If we do it based off of taste, mine 100% wins. If we do it by looks, this looks beyond professional, this can't compete with that. That is for sure. I'm just gonna keep licking the icing off as if I'm two years old again. - Speaking of two years old, I brought you some pictures. So here's sweet Julie with her bowl cut. - For the record, it was never my choice to have a bowl cut. - I'm still hearing about it now. - That looks like I ate, like I licked those clean. - You progressed though, from piles of icing to bowls of icing. - That's true. (festive music) Well, thank you so much for coming in, showing me some mildly embarrassing photos, and how to make these amazing cookies. I hope everyone at home gets a chance to make these and enjoy them as much as we do. Cheers, mama. - Cheers. - Happy holidays. (festive music)

Julia’s Family Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

For the cookies

For the royal icing

Directions

For the cookies

For royal icing

Everything You Need To Bake This Holiday Season