Honey-Gingerbread Cookies

54 Ratings
  • 5 8
  • 4 4
  • 3 22
  • 2 16
  • 1 4

These gingerbread cookies include a generous amount of honey, which gives them a pale golden color and a mildly sweet flavor. If you are making the Gingerbread Town-Square Cake, you can use this template to trace and cut out the different townhouse shapes. 

Martha Stewart Living, December 2007

Gallery

Read the full recipe after the video.

Recipe Summary

Yield:
Makes about 2 dozen town houses, 4 dozen deer or trees, or 6 dozen men
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Ingredients

Directions

  • Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl.

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  • Beat butter and sugar with a mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in honey and molasses. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, and beat until just combined. Divide dough into 3 portions, and wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a generously floured piece of parchment, roll dough to a scant 1/4 inch thick. Brush off excess flour. Slide dough and parchment onto a baking sheet, and freeze for 15 minutes.

  • Cut out desired shapes. Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets, and freeze for 15 minutes.

  • Bake cookies for 6 minutes. Remove sheets from oven, and tap them firmly on counter to flatten cookies. Return to oven, rotating sheets, and bake until crisp but not darkened, 6 to 8 minutes more. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

  • Spoon icing into a pastry bag fitted with a very small plain round tip (such as Ateco #0 or #1). Pipe designs on cookies. Let cookies stand at room temperature until set, at least 2 hours (preferably overnight).

Cook's Notes

Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers for up to 1 week.

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Reviews (8)

54 Ratings
  • 5 8
  • 4 4
  • 3 22
  • 2 16
  • 1 4
Martha Stewart Member
11/11/2016
Extremely sticky and wet, even after a whole night in the fridge. The is a little bit harder after more than 12 hours chill, literally sticks to the parchment paper. Don't quite know what I'm going to do with it. Really surprised that some of you managed to make it work perfectly. And really surprised to that noone from marthastewart.com answers the comments.
Martha Stewart Member
12/23/2013
I made this recipe a couple of times with great results. The cookies could have more spice to them, but I've been making them for other people and like to keep the spice level conservative, so it wasn't a problem. To those having an issue with sticky or wet dough, I'd suggest resisting the temptation to add more flour and instead put the dough in the refrigerator or freezer for more time. The shear amount of honey/molasses would make this dough a nightmare to work with at room temperature.
Martha Stewart Member
11/09/2013
I just couldn't make this recipe work. I even added an additional 2 cups of flour! I'm not sure what to do, now I have a giant ginger-bread mess.
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Martha Stewart Member
12/24/2008
I loved this recipe. Worked perfectly. I think the comments about dough being too soft have more to do with the type of flour giving different results than anything else. It's easy to add a wee bit more flour if you need to. I'll use this recipe all year in place of basic sugar cookie dough which can be boring and tasteless. I used wild organic honey
Martha Stewart Member
12/23/2008
I'm more chef than baker so help me out please. I only have salted butter. Is that okay? Also, do I measure honey and molasses with dry or liquid measuring cups? I think they're more liquid. Also, what is molasses? It smells terrible!! Thanks for any tips or help. :-)
Martha Stewart Member
12/06/2008
These cookies taste great and theyn n n n n n re not dry or hard. Theyn n n n n n re firm enough to hold and decorate. Try this simple method to work with soft dough: cut a few sheets of parchment paper to fit baking sheets. Roll chilled dough between parchment paper. Cut cookies, remove scraps, be careful not to lift the cookies. Reform scraps, and refrigerate. Lift the parchment paper -- with the cookies on it -- and place it, paper-side-down onto the baking sheet. Repeat until the cookies are cut and baked.
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Martha Stewart Member
11/02/2008
The dough for this recipe is way too soft, even after refrigerating overnight. I ended up kneading in about a cup of flour or more to make it workable and fortunately it turned out alright after that. I would use a different recipe next time for this project.
Martha Stewart Member
11/30/2007
The template is too light to use. The recipe sounds wonderful though.
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