Christiana Aretta writes a journal about food, photography, & toys.

Three years ago, I decided to handmake or, perhaps more accurately, handbake all my Christmas gifts. Searching for cookie recipes, I happened to stumble across this recipe on Epicurious and have stuck with it ever since.

It’s a pretty versatile recipe – two years ago, Wayne used it to build a scale model of his parents’ farmhouse in Michigan. Last year, we got ambitious and designed modern art interlocking sculpture cookies. In the middle of July this year, I was struck with a vision of Tetris-shaped gingerbread cookies.

Side Note: I was lucky to have this idea in the middle of July because it gave me exactly 5 months to procrastinate, pretending to look for Tetris cookie cutters online and then 1 week to infect my crack cookiecutter engineering and production team with a nasty stomach bug. Fortunately, it was easy enough to lure unsuspecting cookie production staff to the house with promises of homemade chicken stew, apple cider, sugar cookies, SomaFM’s Xmas in Frisko, and Apples to Apples.

Ingredients

• Dough
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/4 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
• Glaze
• 3/4 cup half and half
• 1/3 cup (1 ounce) juniper berries, lightly crushed
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• Assorted decorations (colored sugars, nonpareils, and dragées)

Preparation

1. Whisk first 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in molasses. Beat in dry ingredients. Gather dough; divide into 4 pieces. Shape into disks. Wrap; chill at least 2 hours and up to 2 days.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Roll out 1 dough disk to 1/8-inch thickness. Using 3 1/2-inch cutter, cut out cookies. Transfer to sheet. Gather scraps; chill.
3. Bake cookies until almost firm in center, 12 minutes. Cool on sheets 2 minutes, then cool on racks. Repeat, using all dough. Store airtight at room temperature up to 3 days or freeze up to 2 weeks.
4. Bring first 2 ingredients to simmer. Cover; chill 5 hours. Strain. Place powdered sugar in bowl. Whisk in half and half by spoonfuls until glaze is spreadable. Frost cookies; decorate. Let stand until glaze sets. Store between sheets of waxed paper in airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.

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