Baby Shower Favors – Little Gingerbread boys

When my mom decided to throw us a baby shower for Mr. Happy Feet’s expected arrival, we immediately started brainstorming about favors. I saw many cute baby shower favors for sale over the internet but decided that we would not purchase online – mainly because of the cost.

In the end, we came up with the idea of doing iced gingerbread “boys” in blue and white.

First thing I did was search for a recipe. This is the one I used.

Gingerbread Cookies

from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook

Prep: 25 minutes; Chill: 2 hr;  Bake 10-12min per sheet; Cool 30 min

Makes About 2½ dozen 2½-inch cookies

If you cut out cookies smaller or larger than 2 ½ inches, be sure to adjust the bake time by either checking a minute or two before the minimum time for smaller cookies or adding time for larger ones.

Ingredients List

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup shortening (I used raw coconut oil)
• 1 ½ cups dark molasses
• 2/3 cup cold water
• 7 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon salt

1)      Beat brown sugar, shortening, molasses and water in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

2)     Heat oven to 350. Grease cookie sheet lightly with shortening or spray with cooking spray.

3)     Roll dough ¼ inch think on floured surface. Cut with floured gingerbread cutter or other shaped cutter. Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.

4)     Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Decorate with colored frosting, colored sugar and candies if desired.

– This recipe I found was scrumptious but it used a lot of molasses – I ran out midway and had to send Hubby out to buy more. *thanks Hubby*

We carefully cut out and baked lots and lots of gingerbread boy cookies.

Mrs. Sayuri really enjoyed helping with the mixing and cutting out stages.

Then I iced the cookies in blue and white colored icings. I used this  egg white frosting recipe because it needed to be an icing that would harden up well:

Gingerbread boy frosting

• 1 egg white
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted (I used a bit less)
• blue food coloring

1. In a bowl, combine egg white and sufficient sugar until thick. Beat until glossy. Coat cookies. Leave to set.
2. I separated this amount in half and colored one bowl with one drop of blue food coloring to get my blue-colored frosting and left the other bowl as is for white.

*For a printer friendly pdf version of the above recipes click this -> gingerbread cookie recipe pdf.*

Once the cookies were cooled and the icing was set, I wrapped them up in blue cellophane squares and tied them off with some white ribbon and curly cued it. A girl friend came over and helped me do this part. We had fun. We snacked on the little gingerbread boys that lost their heads in the process.

I also printed off some little tags on blue card stock with a “thank you for coming” text with: the date of the shower, our names and baby’s “guess” date.

We cut these out with decorative scrapbooking scissors and punched holes in the upper left hand corner of each of these for stringing onto the ribbon once it was tied on.

They turned out great and everyone loved the yummy cookies.