gingerbread cookies

DECEMBER IS FINALLY HERE! I can not even begin to explain to you all how much I freaking love December. I am not sure why, other than the fact that its my birthday month, December is a month of everything Holiday. I LOVE HOLIDAY EVERYTHING...oh and SANTA. To kick off the holidays I want to share my go to gingerbread cookie recipe because this is a staple in my home and the aroma will put even the grinchy-est person in a jolly a** mood.

I have been tweaking this recipe for some time now and for the past three years I have consistently gone back to this recipe. I love this particular recipe because the cookies DO NOT spread, and if you are going to decorate your cookies then that is a huge deal. Nobody wants to spend all that time cutting out the cookies to only have their gingerbread man looking like the Michelin man when they come out of the oven. NOT CUTE! 

I also want to point out that I do not use Crisco for my cookies. A lot of recipes call for Crisco, which is shortening made of 100% vegetable oil. Shortening yields higher, lighter- textured baked good which is sometimes better than butter (so they say). Another difference is that butter naturally has water in it while shortening doesn't, it also has no dairy in it so if that is an issue for you then use shortening. I just don't understand all of that and I like butter so I used butter. If you wanted to use shortening instead, just substitute the same amount of shortening for butter.

These cookies can be made in advanced and stored in your fridge but chilling this dough is a BIG mistake. You can chill this dough if you aren't going to commit to making it right away, so if you do chill it, you must bring it back to room temperature before rolling and cutting. 

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