Chocolate Gingerbread Stamped Cookies Recipe

5 from 7 votes

Chocolate Gingerbread Stamped Cookies Recipe

These glazed Chocolate Gingerbread Stamped Cookies come together incredibly easily and with the extra step of stamping out a pretty design, you'll turn these into festive showstoppers worthy of your cookie box.

Prep Time20

Cook Time10

Total Time30

Course: Cookies

Cuisine: American

Servings: cookies

Calories: 203kcal

Author: Emma Duckworth

Equipment

Stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment
Cookie stamp
Cookie cutters
Baking Tray

Ingredients

Cookie

115 g unsalted butter, divided room temperature
100 g dark brown sugar firmly packed
100 g molasses (black treacle)
1 large egg yolk
235 g plain flour (all-purpose) plus extra for dusting
10 g cocoa powder plus extra for dusting
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon cloves
¼ teaspoon fine salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper freshly ground

Glaze

90 g powdered icing sugar (confectioners' sugar)
15 ml whole milk or more if necessary
½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Cream the sugar, butter and molasses together. Put your stamps in the fridge or freezer to chill until needed. Preheat the oven to 190°C (350°F). Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
Set aside 15g (1 tbsp) butter that we're going to use for the glaze later. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on medium speed, cream together the butter, sugar and molasses for 5 minutes until pale and thick. Make sure to scrape down the base and sides of the bowl periodically. Add in the egg yolk and beat until fully combined.
Add the yolk. Into the mixture, add the egg yolk and beat until well combined. Again scrape down the bowl.
Sift in dry ingredients. Sift the dry ingredients, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, salt and pepper, into the stand mixer bowl and beat on medium until the dough starts to come together.
Roll out, stamp and cut the cookies.
Roll out. Lightly dust your work surface with equal parts cocoa powder and plain flour, turn out the dough and knead it until all the crumbs are incorporated and the dough is smooth. Flatten the dough into a disk and roll out to about 6mm (¼-inch) thickness. If the dough is too soft then refrigerate for 15 minutes or so.
Stamp. Dust the chilled cookie cutters with flour, tapping out any excess and stamp the cookie cutters into the dough applying a firm even pressure. Don't push right through to the work surface though.
Cut out. Use a cookie round (slightly bigger than the stamp) and cut out the cookie rounds. Place them onto a baking tray and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Whilst chilling, pre-heat the oven to 190°C (375°F).
Bake. Divide the cookies between the two prepared baking sheets and bake for 9-10 minutes. You don't want to overbake these cookies, so check on them at 8 minutes. The cookies will be soft when you remove them from the oven but will firm up as they cool.
Make the vanilla bean glaze. While the cookies are baking, melt the remaining butter that we set aside earlier. In a bowl, whisk the powdered icing sugar, melted butter, milk and vanilla bean paste together until it becomes a smooth thin glaze. Add more milk if the glaze is too thick, it should have the consistency of maple syrup.
Glaze the cookies. Once baked, remove the cookies from the oven and leave them to rest for 5 minutes. Then brush on the glaze whilst still warm. The glaze will dry in about 15 to 30 minutes.

Notes

Step-by-Step Photos: My blog post includes helpful step-by-step photos to help guide you through making this recipe.

Recipe: This recipe comes from the brilliant Yottam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's dessert book Sweet. I have tweaked it ever so slightly to include more cocoa powder and to use a vanilla bean glaze rather than their proposed rum butter glaze.

Cookie Stamps: Nordic Ware has a great range of aluminium cookie stamps. The ones used in this post are the Frozen II Falling Snowflake. If you don't have any stamps, use the etched base of a glass or a piece of lace to create a pattern.

To store: Place Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies Stamped Cookies into an airtight container and store at room temperature for up to 5 days.

To freeze: Cookie dough can be frozen for up to 3 months. Wrap well in plastic wrap and then place in a freezer-safe, airtight container and freeze. Thaw at room temperature.

TIP 1: Scrape down the base and sides of the bowl. This is a useful tip when mixing any batter, but especially when using molasses, as it tends to sink to the bottom and coats the bowl. Scraping ensures even mixing.

TIP 2: Chill your dough if it's too soft. Different factors can make the dough a bit too soft to roll and stamp. Rectify this by chilling for 15 minutes or so. But keep an eye on it as on the other end of the scale, a hard dough is impossible to roll!!

TIP 3: Prepare the cookie stamps. Chilling the stamps makes for neat impressions in the dough and a light dusting of flour on them prevents them from sticking.

TIP 4: Get the best design. It does depend on what type of cookie stamp you have as to how deep the designs are cut in it. But press the stamp evenly and firmly, just make sure not to press down all the way through the dough.

Nutrition