Recipe | Soft gingerbread tiles with rum butter glaze | The Simple Things (2024)

FAQs

What makes gingerbread hard or soft? ›

Some gingerbread recipes require some time to soften after baking because they are initially firm. Gingerbread is made harder by molasses and honey, but it becomes softer when water is absorbed by the sugar.

Mistake #2: Not resting your dough

After the gingerbread is cut out, Lomas recommends putting it into the fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to three days. Chilling the dough before it goes into a hot oven gives the butter a chance to firm up and reduces how much it spreads when baking.

Not using molasses.

Follow this tip: Use a combination of both molasses and dark brown sugar in your gingerbread cookie dough to ensure that they'll be crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

From doubling up on molasses to using too much flour, there is a lot that can go wrong. Forgetting the molasses resulted in a crumbly cookie that was light in color. Combining all ingredients at once created lumps in the finished product.

Gingerbread cookies should be soft. They should be supple. They should bend to your teeth before the cookie skin breaks and the crumbs fall all over you. They should retain a bit of elasticity, and maybe you can even leave your fingerprints on the cookie if you hold them too hard because you're just that excited.

Most baked goods won't spoil if you leave them out overnight but the quality of the product can deteriorate .

On the day you choose to bake your gingerbread, you will need to remove it from the fridge and let it rest between 1/2 an hour and an hour or so before you start rolling it out. It will feel quite hard but don't worry a little bit of massaging will soften it up and make it an excellent dough to work with.

Over mixing the dough can lead to a tough textured cookie that doesn't hold its shape as well. Mix on low speed each time while slowly scraping down the sides of the bowl mixing just until everything is combined.

But one unexpected error bakers can make is adding too much of a good thing, butter. Although butter generally makes it all better, bakers who go overboard with it are dooming their cookies to a greasy and crumbly texture.

How long should you chill gingerbread dough? ›

Divide the dough into two thick disks and wrap each disk in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, about 3 hours. (The dough can be prepared up to 2 days ahead.) To roll out the cookies, work with one disk at a time, keeping the other disk refrigerated.

Comments for How to harden gingerbread when it becomes too soft? Putting it back in the oven does not work you have to find a recipe that is harder as putting it back in the oven only over bakes it. My suggestion is to put it back into the oven for up to 10 minutes. The temp of the oven should be around 325 degrees.

Fit Everything Together with Melted Sugar or Royal Icing

The second way is to use burnt sugar as your glue. Just melt C&H® Pure Granulated Cane Sugar in a pan on the stove, dip the gingerbread parts in and hold them together for a few seconds. Then, presto! You've created a solid house.

If your dough is remarkably dry (this can happen depending on how you measure your flour), add 1 teaspoon of milk at a time until it comes together but is not wet/sticky. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to ¼" thickness. Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for 8-9 minutes.

Don't overmix the dough: Overmixing the egg can yield dough and dry cookies, so go easy – only mix until everything is incorporated. The same goes for the flour, too: If you mix too much, the gluten will start developing, yielding tough cookies again. Only mix until no more streaks of dry flour are visible.

Gingerbread Cookies are done when they are set and begin to brown slightly at the edges. They will harden further as they cool, so avoid overbaking so you don't end up with hard, crunchy gingerbread! Underbake slightly to achieve soft, slightly chewy gingerbread cookies.

My suggestion is to put it back into the oven for up to 10 minutes. The temp of the oven should be around 325 degrees. I would watch it very closely.