This gingerbread dough looks and smells like real cookies, but bakes up rock hard. They will keep and smell great for years. You can use this dough to make gingerbread men, garlands, ornaments and houses. We made these in our ward because we are donating a Christmas Tree to our local Festival of Trees. We also did some other fun ornaments: dried oranges, cinnamon sticks, barbed wire snowfakes, and we are also going to attach pinecones that have been sprayed with glittler spray.
3 tbs. shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 teas. baking soda
3/4 cup water
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon of each: cloves, ginger and cinnamon
Beat shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy, stir in molasses. Sift the dry ingredients together. Stir them into shortening mixture in 3 parts alternating with a 1/4 cup of water each time. Dough will be stiff. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. Cut dough into 3 pieces. Knead to warm dough slightly, then roll each piece out about 1/4 inch thick. Cut cookies out with a gingerbread pattern of your choice. Use a drinking straw to punch hole where the ornament will hang (I punched a hole before and after the cookies were baked). Place cookies on cookie sheet and bake 20-25 minutes in a oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees, turn oven off and let cool in oven (I didn't have time for this step because I had to bake tones of them so I let them cool slightly on a cookie sheet and re-punched out the hole before I removed them to a rack). After removing cookies, let dry for about 3 days to totally harden. These cookies are purely for decorative purposes and not to be eaten. If you wish you can seal cookies with 3 coats of clear acrylic and decorate with colorful acrylic paints when dry. *I used puff paints which worked really well.
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