Gingerbread People (and Cats!) Cookies

I love gingerbread cookies. They are fun to make and decorate, and they taste awesome. Especially when you use quality spices. One of the things we’ve learned through these baking adventures is that good baking (and cooking) is really about quality ingredients.

They are also pretty simple to make. The only tricky part is rolling out the cookies, which takes some patience. In the past, I have used a liberal amount of flour on both the (clean) counter and rolling pin, frequently reapplying flour and intermittently picking up the dough to ensure that it doesn’t get embedded into the counter. Recently, I have begun using plastic wrap as a barrier between the dough and counter and the dough and rolling pin to better prevent sticking. I still place a small amount of flour between the dough and plastic wrap, but it requires much less. Finally, to remove flour from your rolled cookies, use a small pastry brush to lightly dust off the flour.

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Lemon ginger butter cookies

I have a deep love for ginger. And I found out that my boss does as well, so when her birthday rolled around in October, I knew I had to find a use for a package of crystallized ginger that I had in the house. I adapted a basic butter cookie recipe and added some lemon zest to give it a little more flavor dimension, but I think this could be equally lovely with orange zest instead. What’s great about these cookies is that they are really easy to make, and you can make the dough and bake as many or as few cookies as you want at a time. All in all, the recipe should yield between 2-3 dozen cookies.