Holiday Baking with McCormick ~ Gingerbread Men Recipe #McCormickBaking #Spon

This is a sponsored post on behalf of McCormick. 

It has been years since we've made gingerbread cookies at home which is crazy because we do quite a bit of baking around the holidays and gingerbread is one of our kids' favorites.  This year we decided to go for it and restocked our pantry with the gingerbread ingredient essentials of ginger, molasses, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Using McCormick's recipe for Gingerbread Men we prepared our dough last night.  Here's the ingredients you'll need to make these yourself:

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons McCormick® Ground Ginger

1 teaspoon McCormick® Ground Cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon McCormick® Ground Nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg

1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract

First mix your flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg and salt in large bowl. Set aside. Next beat the butter and brown sugar in large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the molasses, egg and vanilla. Mix well. 

Gradually add your flour mixture and beat on low speed until well mixed. 

Press your dough into a thick flat disk then wrap in plastic wrap.  We had only a scrap of plastic wrap left so we placed our dough on the plastic then sealed it in a plastic bag.  Refrigerate it for 4 hours or overnight.  We kept our dough refrigerated overnight.

When ready to bake preheat your oven to 350°F. Roll out your dough to 1/4-inch thickness on lightly floured work surface. Cut into gingerbread men shapes with cookie cutter. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets.

Bake your cookies 8 to 10 minutes or until edges of cookies are set and just begin to brown.  Your kitchen will then begin to smell heavenly of baked gingerbread. 

Cool on baking sheets 1 to 2 minutes then remove them to wire racks to cool completely. Decorate cooled cookies as desired. Store cookies in airtight container up to 5 days.

I know our gingerbread men aren't the most perfectly shaped cookies, but when you have this guy as one of your bakers you take what you can get.  And the audience for these cookies really doesn't care what they look like as long as they taste good and they do!

Disclosure:  McCormick provided compensation in exchange for this post.  All opinions and taste-testing are 100% mine.