Yay, I figured out how to make soft, chewy, delicious gingerbread cookies with olive oil instead of butter! The only stipulation is, it’s really important to avoid burning these cookies — but a little bit of icing will fix it.
Your oven might be different from mine, but mine baked perfectly in about 6 minutes. It’s OK if they’re a little soft/under-baked. Baking time will depend on how thick the cookies are.
Here’s a good cookie icing:
- 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar (or powdered monkfruit sweetener
- 1 tablespoon of skim milk (substitute lemon juice to make it vegan). Add more liquid 1 teaspoon at a time to thin the icing to the desired consistency.
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
We iced a few cookies, allowed the icing to harden, and used Wilton FoodWriter markers to color them. I used these awesome firefighter cookie cutters (they’re not that durable unfortunately.)
Olive Oil Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies
Servings: 36
Calories: 82kcal
Ingredients
- ¾ cups packed light brown sugar
- 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
- ½ cup molasses
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 egg
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, granulated sugar, molasses, olive oil and egg until well-blended.
- In another, larger bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, ground cloves, ground black pepper and salt.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture. Use a spatula to stir it around until the wet and dry ingredients are fully incorporated into a moist, uniform dough.
- Divide the dough into 2 equal-sized balls, wrap the dough balls tightly in plastic wrap, and let the dough chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Roll, Cut, and Bake the Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Turn one of the dough balls out onto a well-floured surface. Use a rolling pin to the roll the ball out into a circle, about ¼-inch thick.
- Use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the dough. Gently lift the cookie shapes with a spatula and transfer them to the prepared baking sheets (you should be able to fit 12 to 18 cookies per baking sheet, depending on baking sheet size.)
- Bake the cookies in the hot oven for about 6 or 7 minutes. It's important to avoid burning them! These cookies will still look "uncooked" on top when they're brown on the bottoms! Unburned cookies are soft, chewy and delicious, while burned cookies are a little hard to eat although some icing will fix it.
- I didn't include icing in the calorie count here, but a little confectioner's sugar with lemon juice or milk makes a nice minimalist cookie icing.
