Gingerbread is a quintessential flavor of the season, and nothing is a Christmassy as gingerbread cookies! If you want to get in the Christmas spirit, the aroma of these baking will absolutely do it!
Our favorite gingerbread cookie recipe is one I got from my sister-in-law. (Warning: my nephew can smell these baking from 6 states away and MAY appear on your doorstep if you make them LOL!) These are just the right combination of soft and crunchy and they keep well and are sturdy enough to decorate and package for gift giving. We love to include them in gift baskets because you can personalize the shape and decoration for the recipients…that is assuming they don’t all disappear first…
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We bake these under the watchful eye of these baking nutcracker ornaments perched on the kitchen chandelier. They were a thoughtful hostess gift given to me one year for our Nutcrackers Sweets Dessert Party and I’ve enjoyed them every Christmas since!
Sharon’s Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
~30 cookies
This is a single recipe, but I nearly always double it to make around 5 dozen cookies…I mean, we need to have SOME on hand to eat after we package the majority for gift giving!
Ingredients
1 pkg butterscotch cook & serve (NOT instant) pudding mix
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda.
Directions
Combine pudding mix, butter, and sugar. Mix thoroughly.
Mix in egg
Combine remaining dry ingredients, add to egg mixture. Mix until blended.
Gather dough into a ball, wrap and refrigerate. Chill until firm.
Preheat oven to 350º F.
Roll out dough to 1/8” thickness and cut out cookies in desired shapes.
Bake cookies on parchment lined cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes
Cool on baking racks and frost as desired
For a neat shortcut to the chilling process and an easy way to nicely shaped cookies that retain the texture even when reusing the scraps, follow the same tips for chilling and rolling from our favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe HERE
For gift packaging, royal icing is the sturdiest decorating medium, but tasty buttercream frosting is a delicious alternative if you are serving these at home!
Gift Baskets of home baked treats are a great Christmas gift and one that doesn’t involve supply chain issues, for the most part! So instead of worrying about whether that elusive gift might arrive, start baking instead… Baked treats are a simple joy that makes the holidays merry!
A gift basket is a great solution for a family gift - everyone can enjoy the contents and no need to hunt down something special for that one family member who is impossible to buy for! Consumable gifts are a delicious way to spread the love and say I’m thinking of you, and the recipient doesn’t have to find a space to display/use/store your gift later. Win-win!
This treat basket included a small stuffed reindeer for the new baby in the family.
packaged treats all waiting to go into gift baskets!
In addition to gingerbread cookies, we often include at least an assortment of some of the following: (highlighted text and images link to recipe or cookbook)
Raspberry shortbread bars (from the Flour cookbook),
our favorite lemon tea cakes (from the Having Tea cookbook),
our popular Sea Salt-Caramel-Chocolatey Brownies,
easy sweet and salty Caramel Popcorn,
some addictive Christmas Cracker Candy (seriously, it IS addictive!),
these old fashioned one bowl Butterscotch Brownies (once described as “orgasmic” LOL),
and usually some variety off homemade Chocolate Bark Candy
We package in bakery boxes and cellophane bags which we buy in bulk quantities from ULine, but we’ve rounded up some more sane amounts here from Amazon (click on image for link):
When it comes to packaging a gift basket, you can use a box, basket, tin, or any container to hold your assortment of packaged treats. Err on the side of small for your container so that it looks abundantly full. Fill the container with shred, color-coordinate but vary the shapes and sizes of the treat bags and boxes, wrap the whole thing up in a big sheet of cellophane and, most importantly, top it all with a generous, beautiful bow (you can see a step by step video for how we make a bow HERE) Presentation is everything! Okay, taste is important too…but beautiful presentation makes it that much more enticing!
