Gingerbread Man Cookies

Easy gingerbread man cookies with step-by-step photos, including tips for making a gingerbread man garland. These gingerbread cookies are perfect to give as gifts or to decorate around your home!

Gingerbread Man Cookies

For me, no Christmas is complete without at least one batch of gingerbread man cookies. I say one batch but what I really mean is one baking session with maybe a triple batch!

As a child growing up in Australia, the only Christmas cookie I knew of were gingerbread man cookies. And in my familys Vietnamese bakery, we actually sold them all year round.

What is Lebkuchen?

Since moving to Switzerland where Christmas is entwined with much richer and long-standing historical traditions than in Australia, their Christmas cookie collection is so vast that you can buy complete cookbooks featuring just this seasonal and festive fare.

Lebkuchen is the more traditional gingerbread in Switzerland and the surrounding countries like Germany and Austria, but it is a more of a cake than a cookie, hence the name Kuchen, which means cake in German.

I find that traditional Lebkuchen is also much stronger in spice, a feature which makes it more palatable among the adults and less so with young children.

Gingerbread Cookies

Perhaps it is my upbringing but I much prefer gingerbread cookies to German Lebkuchen. I love the sweet, crunchy bites, and I love the fun shapes of gingerbread cookies.

Gingerbread men feature prominently in our home at Christmas, but the children often raid the cookie cutter collection, so dinosaurs and princess crowns also somehow make it into our Christmas cookie assortment!

And for those of you who live in Switzerland, you can prepare your own Samichlaussckli and replace the traditional Lebkuchen with some homemade gingerbread cookies instead.

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

The following gingerbread cookie recipe is a reliable one which I turn to every year. The golden syrup is what gives these cookies their earthy sweetness, and you can increase or decrease the amount of ground spices to your liking.

For a soft gingerbread cookie, I suggest baking them until they are just lightly golden.

For a crunchy gingerbread cookie, you should bake them for a few extra minutes until the edges become slightly darker than the rest of the cookie. But you might need to experiment; the cookies harden as they cool, and sometimes the very crunchy cookies are best suited to decorating the Christmas tree

For a more simple and buttery gingerbread cookie, I recommend the recipe for my Gingerbread Sabl.

Gingerbread Man Garland

You can decorate the gingerbread men as they are, or you can very quickly and easily turn them into a gingerbread man garland to decorate your front door or to display around the home. I saw this idea in a Donna Hay magazine a few years ago and think they just look so beautiful around the home.

Other suggestions include cutting out snowflakes or other seasonal shapes and turning them into edible Christmas tree decorations!

How to Make Gingerbread Man Cookies

Step 1

For this recipe, you will need to have either an electric stand mixer or a hand-held electric beater.

The first step is to cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is very pale and creamy. This will take about 10 minutes on medium speed.

Step 2

Add the remaining ingredients and beat until a soft dough forms.At this stage, the dough will be very soft because of the softened butter.

Step 3

Roughly divide the dough into two portions.

Step 4

Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper until it is about 4mm thick. The dough will rise slightly upon baking.

Chill the sheets of dough in the fridge for at least 1 hour. This will make it easier to cut out shapes from the dough later. I have kept these sheets of dough in the fridge for several days with no problems.

Step 5

Use a cookie cutter of your choice to cut out shapes from the dough.

Due to the high butter content, this cookie dough can be quite soft, and which is why it is important to chill it thoroughly before cutting out shapes.

If the dough is a bit soft and the shapes cannot be removed from the cookie cutters easily, you might find it easier to stamp out all of the shapes and to then remove the excess dough using a small palette knife. You can then bake the cookies directly from the same baking sheet. If this is the case, leave a bit of room between each shape as the cookies will expand slightly during baking.

Step 6

If you wish to make a gingerbread man garland, use a small round piping nozzle to cut out holes for the ribbon.

Step 7

Bake the gingerbread men until they are lightly golden. If you bake the cookies for too long, they might become too hard to eat once they have cooled. But this might not be a problem if you intend the cookies to be used as decoration!

Leave them to set on the hot baking tray for a few minutes, before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

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Update

This recipe was first published on 12 November 2018. It has been updated with new photos and more comprehensive recipe notes.

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