Simple Iced Gingerbread Man Cookies

Hi Everybody! Happy December and happy first Sunday of Advent! It is terribly cold here and it feels like winter has arrived, now all we need is some snow! I’m so excited to start decorating our home for Christmas; our tree is all set up and waiting to be decorated, the Christmas movies are out ready to be watched, and some Christmas treats have already been baked! Decorating the tree is one of my favorite things to do at Christmas time, and when my husband and I were first married I wanted to get the biggest, most beautiful (real) Christmas tree I could find for our first Christmas together. Being the (very) picky person that I am, we searched for hours in the cold to find the perfect tree and finally found The One, the biggest tree there, with the most perfectly spaced branches and the most wonderful piney Christmas smell. My Christmas mission was complete and it was all perfect, until the tree fell during the night because it was SO big, and half of my precious ornaments broke! Needless to say, we now have a fake tree, but it’s still just as beautiful, and a little safer! Baking Christmas cookies, especially gingerbread cookies, is another one of my favorite traditions, and I wanted to share my first ones of the year with you today! There will be lots more to come, so make sure to come back over the next couple of weeks!

COOKIES

Use a homemade gingerbread cookie recipe or use a store bought mix.

ICING

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

2 – 3 tsp milk

2 – 3 tsp light corn syrup

Gel food coloring

First, make your cookies. Once they have cooled, make your icing. You may need to add more liquid to it, depending on your desired consistency of the icing. Once you have your icing, add your food coloring (I used the Wilton gel food colors, they work very well and you only need a little bit of them to get rich colored icing) to get a beige color (I don’t have an exact formula for this color, I usually just experiment and tweak the color until I get what I need). This will be your base color. Then, take out about a quarter of the icing, and use more food coloring to get it darker, this will be for the buttons. Next, using a plastic piping bag with your icing, outline your gingerbread man cookie with the beige icing, then “flood” the inside, and spread it around using a toothpick to help you smooth it out. Wait a couple of minutes for the icing to set, then use another piping bag with the darker icing to make the buttons. This recipe only makes a small amount of icing, so you may need to double it if you are making a big batch of cookies! (Note: You can also substitute more milk or use egg whites instead of the light corn syrup if you don’t want to use it, it just makes the icing more shiny.)

For another Christmas cookie idea, check out my Snowy Tree Sugar Cookies HERE!