Spice Cookies
If your kids are anything like mine, they love the IDEA of gingerbread men, but they find the actual gingerbread a bit too ‘spicy’. That’s kid talk for ‘challenging’ and if you have a kid that is sensitive to strong flavours this recipe is for you.
Christmas-time is all about having fun as a family and making lifelong memories. Baking makes up the basis for a lot of my own personal Christmas memories and I want to make similar experiences for my own kids.
Baking and decorating a batch of cookies is a reasonably low set-up and low-ish mess activity. And I came up with this recipe which isn’t quite as ‘spicy’ as regular gingerbread, and I am proud to say it is kid-approved (by all 3 of my kids).
The best part about this recipe is that you can adjust the spices to suit your preferences. The recipe calls for 10ml of pumpkin spice but that could simply be swapped for cinnamon and/or a combo of cinnamon and ginger depending on what you and your family like.
Spice Cookies
Ingredients
- 250 g butter softened
- 125 g sugar
- 375 g flour
- 10 ml pumpkin spice or cinnamon
Royal icing
- 5 ml meringue powder
- 500 ml icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Beat the soft butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in the flour and spice (you can mix and match the spices to suit your own palette).
- Mix until dough forms a ball. If the ball seems very soft refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Roll the dough our to 5mm thickness between two sheets of plastic.
- Cut out the shapes and transfer to a lined baking tray. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes (depending on size of cookies). They should be golden brown and firm when touched. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
Make the Royal icing
- Mix the meringue powder and icing sugar.
- Add about 2 table spoons of water and beat with an electric beater until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). If the icing seems to thin add a little more icing sugar and if it seems too firm add a little more water (a drop at a time).
- The consistency of the icing should be soft and pipe-able but not runny.
- Load the icing into disposable piping bags and tie off the back (to prevent leaks).
- Snip a small hole in the tip and decorate the cooled cookies. Bonus points for sprinkles!