The Lean Green Bean: Ginger Cookies

Tomorrow night, the hubby and I are hosting our second annual "Gingerbread House" building party. The quotations are necessary because it's not actually gingerbread, it's graham crackers...it's just easier that way! A couple years ago, the hubby and I built actual gingerbread houses:

Then last year, we hosted our first graham cracker house party:

Pretty good right? We're going to try to out-do ourselves this year.

Anyways, since we're not making actual gingerbread houses, I decided we should still have some ginger treats to eat! So I made some gingerbread muffins and then I made some gingerbread cookies!

I started off following this recipe from Joy the Baker...but I cut down on the butter and sugar, and when I looked at the back of the molasses jar, it had pretty much the same recipe I was making so I just kinda combined the two:

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup molasses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and brown sugar until smoothly blended, about 2 minutes.

Add the egg and molasses and mix until blended and an even light color, about 1 minute. On low speed, add the flour, spices, baking soda and salt, mixing just to incorporate it.

The counter was a disaster!

I made little cookies. It made about 4 1/2 dozen! Instead of rolling them in sugar, I put a little water on the bottom of a glass and smashed them down to get a little sugar on top!

Bake 7-8 minutes. Don't you think all food is better in mini form? Makes me feel like I can eat more :)

When I was younger, one of my favorite things about Christmas was the cookie tins. My mom would bake dozens and dozens of cookies and we would put together cookie trays for all of our friends and neighbors. Then she would store the extras in cookie tins out in the garage. I loved memorizing what kind what in which container! Last year, I bought my own cookie tins...but when I started baking cookies this year, I couldn't find them! So all of my cookies have been stored in tupperware containers, which isn't very festive...