Brown butter gingerbread cookies

What's Christmas without gingerbread cookies? Not fully Christmassy, if you ask me 🎄 I don't know when I started baking gingerbread cookies, but I've been doing it for at least 10 years, which is the age of my second nephew. Recently, he had to write an essay about a member of his family, and that little and cute monster chose me, his aunt 🎉 He mentioned that one of the things he likes best is how we make and decorate gingerbread cookies and houses every Christmas 🤍

And so, every year I fully embrace this self-created tradition and I bake and decorate gingerbread cookies with or without kids. I like to gift them away to friends because food gifts are the best gifts 💖 My husband puts his hands in the air whenever he sees me baking again "Again Montse? We don't even have children!", "Yes, yes, but I'm practicing" ⇣

I do have a lot of fun! And I do love giving food and desserts away to friends. What a funny thing life is. I remember my grandmother looking at me while I ate as a child. Back then, I wondered what the heck was so fascinating. Aha, it's the satisfaction of seeing somebody you love and care about eating food, your food. For my grandma, and for many other elders, food was scarce and precious during some time in her life, hence the fascination with seeing children eat well.

Anyhow, you might be wondering about the recipe? I keep my most treasured recipes in an old red folder, randomly organised, and my gingerbread cookie recipe is there. However, this year, I just happened to watch @thepancakeprincess 10 best gingerbread cookies bake, and so I was intrigued by Baker by nature's Brown Butter Gingerbread Men. I mean... Brown butter is what makes my chocolate chip cookies extra special, so I thought that brown butter in gingerbread cookies must have the same effect.

Bingo 💥

Later on, just before taking some pictures, my husband went and munch on some. He asked me to avoid icing the cookies because they already were so darn good but... What's a gingerbread man without icing? Well... a sad (and scared) gingerbread man. And we don't want that!

Also, can we please admire the cutest and littlest gingerbread man? I found this adorable cookie cutter in Alice Delice and I knew it had to be mine 🍪

As far as "lessons learnt" or better, mistakes I made in this process, let's talk "Stencils". Last year I saw somebody on Instagram posting the most beautiful gingerbread cookies in the shape of german/Scandinavian façades with perfectly windows, doors, and ornaments. I wondered how was possible I couldn't even shape a smile perfectly, yet there's people out there drawing these amazing things. There must be something I'm missing...

Yes, turns out there was something I was missing: Stencils. Some months ago I finally found a shop with the cookie cutters I wanted and their stencils to make the decorations with all the details. How naïve, I made the mistake of not watching a video about icing with stencils until the same day I decorated my cookies with my stencils. And in the video, it was recommended I needed magnets to set the stencils, so they don't move while I add the icing.

I decided I didn't need magnets to set the stencil 🤦🏻‍♀️ and my little house cookies are, well, interesting 😅 so I guess next year I will get those magnets 🙃 The moral of the story? Research thoroughly before starting a project, ANY project, otherwise you will make errors you could possibly avoid. But also, make mistakes, they taught a lot.

As I said above, the recipe for these brown butter gingerbread cookies can be found here. The only differences in my recipe are the addition of cardamom and black pepper to the other spices, and I completely removed the granulated white sugar, I only added brown sugar which is enough according to my taste. For the royal icing, I followed the same recipe from this previous post ✨

If you decide to make this recipe, let me know how it goes in the comments!

Happy baking 👩🏻‍🍳!