FROSTED GINGERBREAD COOKIES

Frosted Gingerbread Cookies image

The Olympic rings symbolize peace, goodwill and global solidarity. Get into the spirit, by celebrating with these cute and colorful cookies made with my my tried-and-true gingerbread recipe. To save time, you can use premade icing that comes in squeeze tubes. Buy individual colors or tint small batches from a tube of white with a drop of food coloring.

Provided by Jackie Alpers

Categories dessert

Time 8h20m

Yield 36 cookies

Number Of Ingredients 13

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Ingredients

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup milk
3 cups bread flour, plus more for the work surface
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 pinches ground cloves
Icing for decorating (I used Wilton Sparkle Gel and Betty Crocker Decorating Cookie Icing)
About 1 cup jelly beans, sorted by color (I used Sugar-Free Jelly Belly beans for black and Jelly Belly Sours for the other colors)

Steps:

Line a 9-inch square baking pan with plastic wrap. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the sugar, corn syrup and milk, and whisk continuously until a candy thermometer registers 100 degrees F, which will happen rather quickly. Remove the saucepan from the heat.
With an electric mixer on low speed, combine the bread flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, salt and cloves. Slowly pour the butter-sugar mixture in, and beat until thoroughly combined, 2 minutes. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, cover with plastic wrap and press with your hands to spread the batter to the sides of the pan. Refrigerate overnight or up to 3 days.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat several baking sheets with cooking spray, or line them with parchment paper. Cut the chilled dough into 4 equal pieces. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out 1 piece of dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch; dust with more flour as needed. (Keep the other dough pieces refrigerated until you're ready to use them.) Using 2 different-sized biscuit or cookie cutters, cut out concentric circles of dough, leaving a 1/2-inch-wide ring. The cookies shown are about 2 inches across, but you can make them larger or smaller based on the size of your cookie cutters. Place the rings about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Repeat with the other pieces of dough.
Bake the cookies until slightly browner on the edges and firm to the touch, 10 to 12 minutes for smaller cookies, 15 minutes for larger. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets on wire racks for a couple of minutes before using a metal spatula to transfer them to the racks to finish cooling.
Squeeze icing onto each cookie, leaving a thin border around it. While the icing is still wet, press the jelly beans into it end to end. The icing will spread to cover the cookie. Store the baked cookies, decorated or not, in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks; if decorated, stack them between sheets of wax paper.