Sourdough Gingerbread Cookies

Sourdough Gingerbread Cookies combine a soft, sweet cookie with warm winter spices of ginger, cinnamon, and allspice. Decorated with a simple royal icing, these gingerbread cookies make an adorable treat, perfect for sharing during the Christmas season.

Can I add sourdough to any cookie recipe?

Yes, you can! Adding sourdough to cookies definitely makes them softer and cakier, so the texture of your cookies will be different. When adding 1/2 cup sourdough starter to a cookie recipe, you just need to reduce the amount of flour you use by 1/2 cup. You will also need to reduce the amount of moisture in the cookie dough, so decrease the amount of butter and/or use one less egg to achieve the right consistency.

What makes gingerbread cookies hard or soft?

The ingredients you use and the time that you bake the cookies for will change their texture. Molasses, sourdough starter, and brown sugar in these cookies make them softer because they retain moisture.

When you bake the cookies, you can also alter their texture. For softer cookies, remove them from the oven when they still look slightly underdone. They will harden as they cool. For crisper cookies, bake 2-3 minutes longer. Crisper gingerbread is great for making gingerbread houses with!

Tips for making Sourdough Gingerbread Cookies:

• Feel free to mix up the spices if you like! For example, try using cloves or nutmeg instead of allspice, or change up the proportions of ginger and cinnamon to your taste.
• Don’t skip the refrigeration step! This will prevent the butter from becoming too warm and making your cookies spread out too much when you bake them.
• For easy decorating, you can use a ziplock bag and a piping tip to ice the cookies. Just snip the corner of the bag, push a piping tip into that corner, fill the bag with icing, and start decorating!
• If you want to build gingebread houses with this cookie dough, bake the cookies for slightly longer, so that they are crisper and will stand up better.
• Store these cookies in an air-tight container for up to 5 days.

Tools you will need:

To make these cookies, you’ll need an electric mixer or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, measuring cups and spoons, a spatula, baking trays, cookie cutters, and parchment paper.

Ingredients you will need:

For the cookies:

• 3 cups flour – All-purpose flour works best for this.
• 1/2 cup softened butter – You can substitute vegan butter if need be, but I wouldn’t try using coconut oil instead, as it will change the consistency of the dough.
• 1/2 cup sourdough starter – This can be active or discard starter.
• 1/2 cup brown sugar – This helps give the cookies their lovely golden brown color.
• 1/4 cup molasses – Feel free to use maple syrup instead if you prefer.
• 1 egg – If you think ahead, leave the egg out for an hour or so before making the dough so that it comes to room temperature.
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp ginger
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp baking soda – This makes the cookies rise, so your starter doesn’t need to be active.
• 1/2 tsp salt – Kosher salt works well here.

For the icing:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk – Feel free to use whatever kind of milk you’d like.

How to make Sourdough Gingerbread Cookies:

Use a handheld or stand mixer to beat the butter on medium speed until it is soft and creamy. (Use a paddle attachment if you’re using the stand mixer.)

Add in the brown sugar, egg, molasses, and vanilla, and continue to mix the cookie dough on medium speed until all the ingredients are combined. Next, pour in the sourdough starter, and beat until it is well combined.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, baking soda, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients a little bit at a time, mixing between each addition. Once the flour mixture is completely combined, stop mixing the cookie dough so that you don’t overwork it. The dough will be pretty soft, and this is ok!

Flatten the cookie dough out into a circle about 12″ across, and wrap it with plastic wrap. Refrigerate the cookie dough for at least 1 hour, but longer is better!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and use the convection setting on your oven if you have it.

On a sheet of parchment paper sprinkled with flour, roll out the gingerbread dough so that it is about 1/4″ thick. Use cookie cutters to cut the dough into gingerbread men, snowflakes, snowmen, or whatever other shapes you like! You can also use it to design gingerbread houses if you want.

Place the cookies on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, leaving about an inch between each cookie.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, depending on how big your cookies are and how soft you would like them to be. They will harden as they cool, so they should look slightly underbaked when you take them out of the oven.

For the icing, stir together the powdered sugar and milk in a small bowl. You can also use food dye to color the icing if you want.

Once the cookies have cooled, pipe the icing onto the cookies to decorate them.

Looking for more sourdough cookies?

If you are, make sure to head over to the Kitchen Counter for other yummy cookie recipes! Here are a few favorites:

• Sourdough Sugar Cookies
• Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Sourdough Snickerdoodles
• Sourdough Shortbread Cookies
• Sourdough Graham Crackers
• Sourdough Brown Butter Cookies

If you make this recipe and enjoy it, let me know in the comments section below! You can also tag me on instagram @oldfashionedinspiration with a picture of your creation.