Tartine's Soft Glazed Gingerbread Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between hard and soft gingerbread? ›

Gingerbread is made harder by molasses and honey, but it becomes softer when water is absorbed by the sugar.

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.

Not using molasses.

Follow this tip: Use a combination of both molasses and dark brown sugar in your gingerbread cookie dough to ensure that they'll be crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

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.

This gingerbread will keep for a total of up to two weeks if stored in an airtight container in a cool place, though is at its very best within the first week. So adjust the "eat by" date according to when you made the gingerbread. We would suggest keeping the pieces of cut gingerbread as large as possible.

Gingerbread Cookies are done when they are set and begin to brown slightly at the edges. They will harden further as they cool, so avoid overbaking so you don't end up with hard, crunchy gingerbread!

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.

Timing is the key to achieving the crispy edges and chewy centers of a perfect gingerbread cookie. Due to gingerbread's dark color, it can be tricky to tell when they're done baking—look for puffed up, just-set centers. Gingerbread cookies will collapse as they cool, delivering that chewy cookie texture.

An excessive amount of butter makes it where the flour is unable to absorb the combined fat, which causes the cookie to spread too widely and the sugar to carbonize more easily because it's surrounded by too buttery a dough.

Can you overmix gingerbread? ›

Over mixing the dough can lead to a tough textured cookie that doesn't hold its shape as well. Mix on low speed each time while slowly scraping down the sides of the bowl mixing just until everything is combined.

Chill the dough: The dough is sticky once it's all beaten together in your mixing bowl and therefore, it absolutely MUST be chilled for at least 3 hours. Give yourself enough time in the kitchen or make the cookie dough and chill it overnight.

With its golden, amber color, it is lighter than molasses, though the two are similar in their thickness. Golden syrup also a liquid sweetener, so 1 cup of golden syrup can replace 1 cup of molasses. Golden syrup has a unique flavor, so it may alter the flavor of your recipe slightly.

Silicone mats are a great reusable alternative, as well! But parchment paper is always reliable. Our Gingerbread Men here at Muddy's Bake Shop were baked on parchment, and they give parchment two thumbs up!

On the day you choose to bake your gingerbread, you will need to remove it from the fridge and let it rest between 1/2 an hour and an hour or so before you start rolling it out. It will feel quite hard but don't worry a little bit of massaging will soften it up and make it an excellent dough to work with.

Gingerbread biscuits can be hard or soft, so if you want to make decorations, you'll need a recipe that will set hard and be very dry. The drier the biscuit is, the longer the icing will keep its original colour and stay hard. If the biscuits are soft, the icing will start to suck up moisture and colour over time.

A 1:4 ratio of butter to flour makes the gingerbread strong. Corn syrup keeps freshly baked gingerbread pliable and soft, so it's easy to cut while warm.

Dough should be soft (not dry or crumbly) but not sticky. If sticky, add a few tablespoons of flour until desired consistency is achieved. Remove 1/2 of dough from bowl, make a ball, and place on a large piece of plastic wrap on counter.