Kid Friendly Gingerbread Cookies

“I hope your days are filled with countless tiny miracles unfolding continuously, sewn together in the mess you call life.”

— Sjana

CHRISTMAS IS THIS WEEK!!

Am I the most excited person in our house?! Absolutely! Am I hoping that in the coming years, Oliver will join me on the excitement train?! DUH! This has always been my favorite time of the year, there’s just no way around it. We have been binging all of the Christmas classics: Elf, The Santa Clauses, A Christmas Carol, terrible Lifetime and Hallmark movies, you name it! Oliver could care less, yet he has been becoming more and more attracted to the gifts under the tree, but he is still in his “I love dog toys” phase and “let me open drawers” phase.

While he may not be as keen about the holidays as I am (yet!), one thing that he does love is food! If we sit down for a snack, he needs a bite; if we have water, he needs a sip; if he sees something on our dinner plates that isn’t on his, he must have it—you get the picture! That being said, I have been waiting for this day, when I could bake with my little one, and it honestly was SO much fun! Oliver mainly just wanted to play with the dough and eat as many cookies as he could before I could stop him, but I rolled with it!

Growing up, making Christmas cookies and bread was quite an event! My mom would bake dozens of Challah and cinnamon swirl loaves to give to friends, tins and tins of spritz cookies, gingerbread, PB balls, galore! We would also always do a gingerbread house decorating contest (cannot wait for this in the years to come!), and I wanted to start some traditions with our little guy! That being said, I wanted to make a KID FRIENDLY recipe for Oliver. That means low on the sugar pole but stuffed with spices! We aren’t giving him chocolate just yet, he doesn’t consume that much dairy, and he seems to be ultra-sensitive to sugar, like he gets very hyper! Honestly, what would you expect with an (almost) 11-month-old?! So, I wanted to make these as low in sugar as I could, cutting the amount of molasses in half and using less brown sugar than normal. To me, I am all about the spices in a gingerbread cookie, so that is definitely not lacking whatsoever here! Due to cutting out some molasses, I added in some dairy-free milk to make sure these cookies are nice and moist! Overall, Oliver LOVED these (see below!), and I cannot wait until we decorate them next year with candies and icing and who knows what else! For now, I’m going to enjoy my sweet little bub and all of his craziness, hopefully we don’t eat all of them before Santa comes!

ingredients

Butter—4 oz, or 8 TBL

Brown Sugar—3.5 oz, or ½ C

Molasses—3.75 oz, or 1/3 C

Vanilla Extract—1 tsp

Egg—1

Flour—18 oz, or 3 C

Baking Soda—1 tsp

Salt—1 tsp

Cinnamon—1 ¼ TBL

Ginger—1 ¼ TBL

Cloves—½ tsp

Allspice—½ tsp

Dairy-free milk—2.5 oz, or 5 TBL

process

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5-10 minutes.

Add in the egg, vanilla and molasses to the mixer, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl every few minutes. It will begin to look slightly curdled—that’s okay!

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and all of the spices.

With your mixer on low, add this to your creamed mixture, mix until just combined.

Slowly stream in your milk, mix for about 30 seconds so that a homogenous dough forms.

Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and put in the fridge to firm up, either a couple of hours or overnight.

When you are ready to bake your cookies, preheat the oven to 350˚F.

Knead the dough with your hands a bit so that it warms up and is easier to roll out.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough until it is about ¼” thick.

Using whatever cutters you would like, stamp out cookies and place on a baking sheet that is lined with either parchment, a Silpat or nonstick spray.

Continue to reroll the dough until you have used it all, making sure to keep the cut-out cookies in the fridge until you are ready to bake them.

Bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, 4 minutes.

Allow to cool on a rack prior to either decorating or eating!

Bon Appétit!

Thick Mint Cookie

“When you own your breath, nobody can steal your peace.”

— Unknown

My idea behind this was short and sweet—I love Thin Mints, I love all things chocolate and mint, it’s the holiday season, why should I have to wait for it to be Girl Scout cookie season, so let’s make a thin mint! But then, I was like OH NO, let’s make a THICK mint. A big, big cookie, single serve if you want, so instead of sitting down to eat an entire sleeve of Thin Mints, you can just eat one cute little skillet cookie!

As my husband isn’t the biggest fan of the chocolate-mint combination (crazy, right?!!??) and my 10-month-old son is too young to eat chocolate (I just read that it is recommended to wait until they are TWO to eat chocolate…), I got this baby all to myself! There is just something about the way that anything chocolate and mint tastes in the winter, as you listen to holiday music for 2 months, wishing snow was trapping you inside instead of a pandemic… it all sounds so dreamy. Unfortunately, it’s still in the 60’s here in Atlanta and the only reason we aren’t going anywhere is because it’s too dangerous to!

BUT! Let’s just enjoy these moments that we are forced to stay home, watch all of the cheesy Christmas movies on Hallmark and Lifetime, eat delicious food, light all of the balsam scented candles, listen to Michael Bublé Christmas for the millionth time, and eat a giant single-serve cookie because why the hell not! If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that enjoying a THICK MINT cookie to myself is MORE than okay, as there will be zero guilt here in the KBemBakes household! Now back to dancing to my regularly scheduled holiday music with my son while my husband both laughs at us and looks like we are slightly nuts!

ingredients

Butter, room temperature—4 oz, or ½ C

Brown Sugar—6 oz, or ¾ C

Eggs—1

Vanilla Extract—1 tsp

Peppermint Extract—1 ½ tsp

Flour—6 oz, or 1 C

Cocoa Powder—2.25 oz, or ¾ C

Baking Powder—2 tsp

Salt—½ tsp

Chocolate Chips—3.75 oz, or ½ C

process

In the bowl of your mixer, combine the butter and brown sugar, cream until light and fluffy, about 10 minutes.

Add the egg and both extracts. Mix until combined, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

Slowly add this to the creamed mixture in the mixer, making sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Add in the chocolate chips.

Preheat your oven to 350˚F.

Butter a small cast iron skillet.

Press the cookie dough evenly into the pan and allow to firm up slightly in the fridge while your oven preheats.

When ready to bake, bake for 15 minutes, rote the pan 180˚, and then bake for 12 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

Optional Topping: melt together about ¼ C of chocolate chips with 1 TBL of coconut oil for about 30-45 seconds in the microwave (stirring every 15 seconds), drizzle on top of cookie skillet.

Dig in with a spoon for maximum deliciousness!

If you want to make individual drop cookies, bake for 7 minutes, rotate, 7 minutes.

Bon Appétit!

Chai Spice Snickerdoodles

It’s holiday baking season!!! The best time of the year!!!

Yeah yeah, I have been nonexistent on this bad boy for a majority of the year, but that’s life! When you buy a house, change jobs AND find out you’re pregnant, my little passion project that is this blog seems to go to the backburner. Or, well, into storage, where it gathered a lot of dust and you only remember it when you’re busting out the Christmas decorations mid-November…

All of this being said, I’m going to do my best to post on here as often as I can! Seeing as I am no longer working in a bakery, I actually miss doing it a lot! I’m no longer drained from 2am wake ups, my feet don’t hurt from standing on them all day long in a bakeshop, and I actually have true weekends now, so I’m going to enjoy this life as long as I can until the baby boy comes in February, and get back into this wonderful world of baking! 

Now that y’all are up to speed with my personal life, let’s talk COOKIES! I love a cookie, especially a holiday one. The flavors are incredibly inviting, the options are endless, and they are simple. That’s exactly what I love around the holidays. You can bake up a million different types of cookies, fill platters with them, gift them, bake them all day long and feel accomplished, plus, they’re easy! Sure, if you’re hand cutting them and decorating them with piped icing, that takes some time, but overall, they’re the most loving and forgiving of desserts!

 I first made these chai spiced snickerdoodles for my work Halloween party (and won 1stprize I might add!) and decorated them with some buttercream and spooky eyes for that mummy look. When I put these out, all I could think of was uhhh HOLIDAY COOKIE STAPLE! They’re soft, they’re filled with the perfect blend of spices, they’re cozy, I could go on. These chai spiced snickerdoodles are also light enough to not give you that belly ache when you eat a few after dinner, or for a snack…see, perfection.

The recipe is a nice creamed cookie method, and you have TOTAL control over what spices are added! Also, black pepper? Yep—that’s in chai! So it’s in these babies, too. If you want more or less of something, of course, that’s up to you and your taste buds. Also, the chocolate drizzle is another optional addition to these, but it’s a nice touch to the sweet outside of the cookie to put something slightly rich yet not overwhelming on them, so I promise that you won’t regret that drizzle!

WELL! Happy holiday baking season, let’s spend this next month turning up in the kitchen, belting out your favorite holiday tunes, putting lights in every open space, and just being full of joy and happiness (and cookies…)!

ingredients

Butter—13 oz, or 1 ½ C

Brown Sugar—8 oz, or 1 C

Eggs—2

Vanilla—2 tsp

Flour—15 oz, or 3 C

Baking Soda—1 tsp

Baking Powder—1 tsp

Salt—½ tsp

Cinnamon—2 tsp

Black Pepper—1 tsp

Maca Powder (optional)—1 tsp

Sugar—½ C

Cinnamon—1 ½ TBL

Ginger—1 tsp

Cloves—½ tsp

Nutmeg—1 tsp

Black Pepper—¼ tsp

Semisweet Chocolate—8 oz, melted

process

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add in the eggs and vanilla, and mix until combined. Scraping down the sides of the bowl is necessary for this step.

In a separate bowl, sift together all of the dry ingredients (from flour-maca powder).

With the mixer on low, slowly add in the dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients.

Mix until combined, scraping down when needed.

Wrap and transfer cookie dough into the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

When you are ready to bake cookies, preheat your oven to 350 F.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar and spices.

Roll your cookie dough into 1.5 oz balls, or about 2 TBL worth of dough—of course you can make these as small or as large as you’d like!

Roll each ball into the sugar spice mixture and place on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or sprayed with nonstick spray.

Bake cookies 12-15 minutes. They will be slightly browned on the edges, with a nice soft center, this will be what keeps them so soft.

Place on a cooling rack until ready to coat in chocolate.

When you are ready to drizzle chocolate on these cookies, melt your chocolate (I like a nice 70%-80%) either in the microwave or in a double boiler over the stove.

To drizzle, you may either use a piping bag, a spatula or a spoon to drizzle as much or as little chocolate as you’d like over these cookies.

Allow to cool before storing. These can be stored at room temperature up to a week!

Recipe makes 2 dozen cookies.

Bon Appétit!