Gingerbread!

We have been trying out many recipes in the past few years, trying to find one our family likes. And unless something else catches my eye, we'll probably be staying with this recipe.

Every year my husband cuts out templates and hand carves each piece of our 4-5 gingerbread houses. That's a lot of carving!! (My job is to make the frosting and pour the candy into bowls. :) 

We usually like to do this around New Year's Eve, but this year it got post-poned for a week. But they were still very much enjoyed!

Ingredients

• 2 cups organic whole spelt flour
• 1 1/2 cups organic kamut flour (see note below about substitutions)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, softened
• 3/4 cup Rapadura (or sucanat)
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup unsulfured organic molasses

Instructions

Preparing the dough
1. In a medium bowl, mix together the flours, spices, baking soda and salt.
2. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, cream the butter, coconut oil and rapadura (or sucanat) together until creamy. Mix in the egg and molasses; blend until smooth and creamy.
3. Finally, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat on low speed until thoroughly well blended. Refrigerate dough at least one hour.
Rolling out the dough
4. Once dough is chilled, divide in half. Place one half of the dough on a large sheet of parchment paper on your kitchen counter (be sure to form it into a tightly compressed dough ball) and keep the other half of the dough in the bowl and return to the frig to keep chilled. Place another sheet of parchment paper over the dough ball and pat down a bit with your hand to flatten the dough and then roll it out to 1/4 inch thick.
Cutting shapes in the dough
5. Remove the top sheet of parchment and use a gingerbread man cookie cutter to cut shapes in the dough, but do not try to remove the gingerbread boys from the parchment paper. Instead, slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and place in freezer for a few minutes to allow cookie cut-outs to harden a bit. This will help you to be able to get the gingerbread men off the parchment paper without losing their shape or dismembering them – ouch!
6. While you're waiting for the dough to harden, preheat oven to 350 degrees.
7. Then, take out the other half of the chilled dough from the frig and place it on a large sheet of parchment paper and repeat above steps to roll out and cut shapes in the dough. By the time you do this, the cut-out dough in the freezer will be ready for the final steps listed below.
Baking cookie cut-outs
8. Once the cut-out dough has hardened up a bit, remove it from the freezer and gently separate your gingerbread boys from the dough and place the little guys onto a sheet of clean parchment paper for decorating.
9. Then, decorate the gingerbread boys using your favorite dried fruits and nuts, as shown in photos above.
10. Finally, slide the parchment paper with the decorated gingerbread boys onto a baking sheet and bake in preheated oven for 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool for 3-4 minutes on the baking sheet before removing and placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.
Use those dough scraps
11. Place the dough scraps from your cut-outs into a bowl and place back in frig. Then, remove your second sheet of cut-out dough from the freezer and follow above steps for decorating and baking.
12. Finally, form all of the remaining dough scraps into a dough ball and repeat the steps for rolling and cutting the dough as listed above. YUM!

 ** A few notes about changes we made**
-despite her warnings about changing the type of flours, I used a general mix of white wheat, barley, pastry and possibly einkorn (all freshly ground). I did use the recommended kamut flour though.
-We don't have ground ginger, so I forgot to add that in. I meant to tell my husband so he could mix it in right before cutting them, but forgot. So these tasted a lot like molasses cookies, which was just fine with all of us!
-our dough, possibly because of all our different flours, was pretty stiff (so we did not need the parchment). Next time I think I'd probably add in a 1/2 cup at a time until it was the desired consistency.