How to Make Gingerbread Ornaments for Your Pre-lit Christmas Trees
When Christmas rolls around, there are several things that start popping up that remind all of us Christmas is here. One of those things is gingerbread. While there are gingerbread flavored items throughout the year, most of the time, gingerbread men and houses are not really seen until Christmas is getting closer. Gingerbread is something that many people decide to use as their theme on their prelit Christmas trees.
And while people are using this gingerbread theme, many people are going the extra mile and making their own gingerbread ornaments that they can hang onto their prelit Christmas trees. If this is something that you would like to do, then we have the recipe for you that is going to allow you to have all the gingerbread ornaments that you would ever want!
This recipe on average will give you around 24 cookies. However, if you have fairly large prelit Christmas trees, then you may find that you need to double this recipe.
Materials Needed for Making Gingerbread Ornaments
The ingredients include:
– 5 cups of all-purpose flour
– 3.5 tsp of ground ginger
– 3/4 tbsp of ground cinnamon
– 1 tsp of ground nutmeg
– 1/2 tsp of ground cloves
– 1 tsp of salt
– 1/2 tsp of baking soda
– 2 stick of unsalted butter
– 2/3 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
– 2 large eggs
– 2/3 cup of molasses
You are going to combine all of this together and mix together. Now, here comes the fun part, making the cookies!
You need to go ahead and get together all your cookie cutters. With these you may find that you want to go with traditional gingerbread men, or you can go with stars, candy canes, whatever you want. The dough is going to need to be chilled for at least 2 hours, then you can preheat the oven when you are ready to cut these and bake.
Decorating Your Gingerbread Ornaments
The best way to do this is to cut the dough in half and then roll this out onto a floured surface until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Then use the cutters to cut all the cookies. Once these are cut, then put these onto the pan, about an inch apart.
Bake the cookies for about 12 to 15 minutes until they are slightly firm. Then remove these and immediately take a rounded skewer to place a hole into each of these cookies so you can use ribbon to string these onto your prelit Christmas trees.
The good news is that these cookies are totally safe to eat at this point, so feel free to have a few. If you plan on using these cookies on your prelit Christmas trees for many years to come, then you can decorate these with icing, let them air dry, and then spray them with a clear coat. Once they are sprayed, they are not fit for human consumption, so keep them out of the way of hungry people!