'Tis the season to have Gingerbread!

I went all out with gingerbread this holiday and loved it! It was actually my first time tasting and baking anything gingerbread.

I followed Martha Stewart's Gingerbread cookies recipe, and they were pretty simple to make and tasted delicious.  The only thing I made different from the recipe was instead of using ground ginger, I used actual ginger and shaved into fine pieces. This added extra spiciness to the cookies.

I made the dough a day before baking. I wrapped it in saran wrap and put it inside the fridge to chill. This process certainly made it a lot easier and cleaner to cut out the cookie shapes on the day of baking.   After cutting all the shapes, I then put them back to the fridge to freeze for 15 minutes before I bake them. The cookies maintained most of its shape with minimal spreading. I was impressed with the overall results. 

Then the fun part was decorating the cookies!

To make Gingerbread Christmas tree, I made various sizes of star-shaped cookies and stacked them on top of each other with the biggest at the bottom as base. Because I didn't have enough dough to make the tree taller, I added small star pieces in between each layer to add height. I used royal icing to 'paste' them together and decorated with candy balls. 

For various decorations, simply used royal icing and silver chocolate balls, or coloured sprinkles and let your imagination flow. 

Happy decorative holiday!

Check out my other Christmas DIY ideas!

Make Your Own Christmas Cutout Card (Free Download)
Rudolph the Reindeer Christmas Cake Pops (Tutorial)
DIY Gold Hand Lettering Christmas Ornament (Tutorial)
Sweetest Present to Give: Christmas Cupcakes Bouquet (Tutorial)

Holly Jolly Chocolate Cake Pops (Tutorial)