This recipe for Easy Gingerbread Cookies is perfect for cookie cutouts and gingerbread houses.

Making gingerbread cookies is a terrific way to enjoy the holiday season, with their fun cookie shapes, spicy dough with a kick, and custom decorations that make each one unique. Plus, dunking your easy gingerbread cookies into a cup of hot chocolate while watching “Merry Christmas Charlie Brown” makes a terrific Christmastime tradition.

How to Make Easy Gingerbread Cookies

Start by whisking together all purpose flour, brown sugar, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cloves, salt and baking soda in a mixing bowl or a stand mixer.

Next, drop in 12 individual tablespoons of softened, but still cool, butter. This dough is easier to work with when it is cool- it will start to stick to your rolling pin if it gets too warm.

Beat the butter chunks into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like wet sand and there are no more chunks of butter.

Next, slowly beat in some molasses and a little milk to form a stiff dough. This dough is edible if you’d like; there’s no raw egg!

Divide the dough into three equal parts, and wrap two of them in plastic wrap and pop them in the fridge to stay cool. Place the remaining dough onto a flat baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

How to use cookie cutters

Press the dough into a disk, then roll it out to about 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch thickness. Press your cookie cutters into the dough, and wiggle them around a bit before lifting. Try to leave at least 1/4 inch between cookie shapes.

Next, peel up and remove the excess dough around the cookie cutter shapes, leaving the shaped dough in place. Keep the excess dough so you can make more cookies! Smoosh it together and roll it out again and again until it’s all used up.

If you wish to make some into Christmas tree ornaments, use a straw to cut holes for ribbon or string.

If you work fast enough, the dough should still be cool and you can put it right into the oven to bake. IF the cookie dough has warmed to room temperature, it will spread just a little while baking. If this annoys you, the fix is easy! Place the cookie sheet with the cut out cookie dough on it into the freezer for about 7 minutes. Then put it straight into the oven. This should keep your cookies from spreading.

Continue rolling and cutting another dough ball and place the two batches in the oven at the same time. One on the upper middle rack, and another on the lower middle. Swap shelves half way through and rotate baking sheets from front to back for even baking.

Bake until the cookies have darkened slightly in color and are stiff in the middle when pressed gently with a finger. Slide the parchment paper with the cookies still on top, over to a cooling rack to cool for 10 minutes.

Then you put your creative hat on and GO TO TOWN decorating these cuties with Special Royal Icing made just for these kinds of cookies. It’s good to use a frosting that dries hard and fast, ensuring your gingerbread houses are tightly glued and your gingerbread men (and women!) don’t lose their buttons.

I made these adorable mini-gingerbread houses with a 3D mini gingerbread house cookie cutter I found at World Market. No World Market locations near you? You can order the cutter online here. They are stinking cute and easy to throw together because they’re teeny-tiny!

I hope you have a marvelous time making these Easy Gingerbread Cookies with your family and friends! Also, please rate and review this recipe to help out future readers :0) Thanks!