Gingerbead Houses

We have a family tradition at Thanksgiving.  After dinner, the grown ups gather, clear the tables and set up work stations for the kids.  There are candy dishes full of red hots, peppermints, candy canes, chocolates, and every kid gets a gingerbread house to decorate and take home.  Last Christmas, my hubby got me a neat, cast iron gingerbread house mold.  I am using it to make the gingerbread cottages.  It's been a long time since I made the gingerbread houses, so I've been testing recipes this weekend and here's the best one I have found so far...  It comes right off the bottle of Grandma's Original Molasses.

GINGERBREAD COOKIES
8 Tbsp. butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground cloves

Put the butter, sugar and molasses in a mixing bowl and mix well.  Mix in egg.  Sift dry ingredients and slowly mix into wet ingredients.   Chill in refrigerator for 3 hours.  Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Roll out half of the dough 1/4" thick on a lightly floured board (I am using a mold this year, so I am not rolling out the dough, but in the past I have found that the less you work with this dough, the better your shapes will be, so I literally flour and roll out my dough on parchment paper, cut out my gingerbread men, pull up the scraps, and place the parchment paper covered in gingerbread men onto my double insulated cookie sheet and cook.)  The recipe says to simply flour your surface, roll out dough, cut out shapes,place them on a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 8-10 minutes.   I will post pictures of the nieces, nephews, and grandson's creations Thursday.  

Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!


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