Soft Gingerbread Cookies with Cream Cheese Icing
These Frosted Gingerbread Cookies are perfectly soft and chewy, with a warmly spiced molasses flavor. The cream cheese icing on top dries down but stays soft rather than becoming tooth-cracking hard like most gingerbread icing recipes tend to do!
You can decorate these cookies as simply or elaborately as you like. Just get those Christmas carols turned up, or pop on your favorite holiday movie to watch while you bake and decorate!
“Made this icing for my Christmas sugar cookies and it was SO good and great for decorating too!! Like everything on this page it was perfect!” – Josh, So Much Food reader
Table of contents
My Go-To Recipe for Frosted Gingerbread Cookies
These are the perfect gingerbread cookies for decorating (and eating), if I do say so myself. They aren’t too heavy on the gingerbread spice, they’re sturdy yet soft, and they will make your house smell amazing while baking.
The icing for these gingerbread cookies might just be the best part, though! To me, just powdered sugar and milk tastes like pure garbage. However, the cream cheese really adds some nice texture and helps to get rid of that cloying sweetness.
Plus, my gingerbread icing recipe won’t dry rock hard and start to crack like a traditional royal icing! It’ll be dry to the touch but still soft. Win!
This recipe is SO simple and fun to make, and cookies are great for decorating together with your kids or friends around the holidays!
Ingredients You’ll Need for the Cookies and Icing
- Butter. Make sure the butter is at room temperature, or else your cookie dough won’t come together properly. To speed this up, cut the butter into cubes to expose the inside to the warm air.
- Brown sugar. Helps keeps the cookies moist and imparts a caramel-y undertone.
- Molasses. Stick with unsulphered molasses and skip the bitter blackstrap kind.
- Spices. Ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice flavor the soft gingerbread cookies without overpowering them. I also added some vanilla to the cookie dough for depth.
- Flour. Regular all-purpose flour is the play here.
- Eggs. Bind the cookie dough together. They also need to be at room temp!
- Baking soda. Helps keeps the cookies soft.
- Cream cheese. It’s important that you use full-fat cream cheese sold in a foil-wrapped brick, otherwise the icing won’t set up properly.
- Corn syrup. Helps to firm up the icing and make it nice and glossy.
- Powdered sugar. Sweetens the icing without making it grainy.
- Half and half. Makes for a super rich, creamy, and pipe-able icing.
Pssst! Add Corn Syrup to Your Icing to Keep It Soft
I know corn syrup has a bad reputation, but it’s essential in making this cream cheese frosting recipe for the gingerbread cookies. Corn syrup gives the icing a smooth, glossy finish while keeping it soft and pliable even after drying on top of the cookies.
If you’ve ever bitten into a gingerbread cookie only to discover the icing has gone rock hard and crunchy, the combo of corn syrup and cream cheese in my icing recipe will fix that issue!
How to Make and Ice Gingerbread Cookies
- Make the cookie dough. The wet ingredients need to be combined in a large mixing bowl before the dry ingredients are mixed in. (The wet mixture will look curdled before the flour goes in, but that’s okay!)
- Chill for 3 hours or overnight. I suggest dividing the gingerbread cookie dough into two discs and covering them with plastic wrap to prevent them from drying out.
- Roll out until 1/4-inch thick. You’ll need to flour your work surface liberally since this is a sticky cookie dough. I used large cookie cutters, but you can use any shape and size you like. Just make sure to bring the scraps together so you can make as many cookies as possible!
- Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool completely before decorating.
- Make the cream cheese icing and decorate. The icing gets whisked together in a bowl, then divided into smaller bowls before being colored with gel food coloring. You can pipe or spread this icing over the cookies, so do whichever you prefer.
Jenny’s Tips for Making Frosted Gingerbread Cookies
Chill the dough for at least 3 hours. Because the dough is fairly sticky, it really does need some time in the fridge so that it’s easier to work with. I recommend chilling the gingerbread cookie dough overnight, but if you’re in a crunch, make the dough in the morning, chill it, and then decorate in the afternoon.
Get creative when decorating. I like to get into the decorating so I chose a few different shapes and dyed the icing accordingly. I’m also a huge fan of the sparkling sugar and little sugar pearls on the cookies for extra cuteness. But feel free to decorate you cookies however you like!
Use gel food coloring to color the icing. It won’t make the gingerbread frosting runny like traditional food coloring tends to do, plus the colors will be more intense.
If you give this recipe a try, be sure to let me know. Leave a comment with a star rating below. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter and never miss a new recipe! You can also snap a photo & tag @JENNYGOYCOCHEA onInstagram. I LOVE hearing about & seeing your SMF creations!
More Christmas Cookies You’ll Love
- Gingerbread Cookie Sandwiches
- Christmas Sugar Cookie Bars
- Eggnog Snickerdoodles
- Cranberry White Chocolate Cookie Bars
- Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Slice and Bake Chocolate Chip Shortbread
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Soft Gingerbread Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
Gingerbread Cookies
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature (1 cup)
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup unsulphured molasses
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
Cream Cheese Icing
- 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
- 3 oz light corn syrup
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup half and half
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- gel food coloring (any colors)
Instructions
- Combine the wet ingredients. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter, brown sugar, and molasses until fluffy. To the creamed butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla and beat well. (If the mixture looks curdled, that's okay, everything will come together when you add the flour.)
- Combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice and set aside.
- Bring it together. Add the flour mixture all at once to the wet ingredients and mix on low until the dough just comes together.
- Chil. Divide the dough into two discs (it will be sticky, that's okay) and cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (or at the very least 3 hours).
- Roll and cut the dough. Preheat an oven to 350ºF. Once the dough has chilled, remove one disc from the fridge and liberally flour your work surface, the dough and rolling pin. Roll dough out to about 1/4" thick. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Using a 5" cookie cutter, cut out as many cookies as you can and place them on the prepared trays. You can bring the dough back together and roll it out again twice, but after that discard any scraps.
- Bake. Bake cookies for 10 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from the tray and cool completely before decorating. Repeat with remaining cookie dough until all cookies have been baked.
- Make the icing. Beat together cream cheese, corn syrup and vanilla extract until smooth. Add powdered sugar and mix until combined. Add just enough milk for the icing to be pipeable (you don't want it to be runny).
- Decorate the cookies. Divide icing and add desired coloring. Transfer to piping bags and decorate! Use sparkling sugar and pearls for added cuteness.
Rate & Review This Recipe
Made this icing for my Christmas sugar cookies and it was SO good and great for decorating too!! Like everything on this page it was perfect!
Eeks, I’m in a crunch because I made this icing last minute but now wondering if it can sit on the counter until tomorrow. I already iced them but wondering now with the cream cheese if I should waited. Is there enough sugar for it to stay good sitting out for a night? Thanks!
Should be fine! Just store in an airtight container.