Gingerbread dough

It is finally time to bake gingerbread cookies again! This is a simple recipe that I used a few times last year and although I set out to find some alternatives this year, I think the cookies turn out exactly how I want them with this recipe. The recipe comes from www.ica.se and since it is excellent as it is, I'm not going to make any changes to it.

However, I did see some comments on that recipe about both crumbly or sticky/wet dough. Having made this recipe a few times, I can only advise weighing all the ingredients (except for the spices where it is easier to use tablespoon measures) to be sure that the ratio between wet and dry ingredients is as intended. As for the boiling of cream, sugar, syrup and spices, make sure to just give everything a quick boil on medium-high heat while stirring. For me, it took about 6 minutes and as soon as it bubbles, remove the pan from the plate, mix in the butter and let everything stand at room temperature for 2 hours until the mixture is cool or at most somewhat lukewarm. The finished dough also needs to rest for at least a day in the refrigerator.

Total number of cookies from this recipe is somewhere between 80-100, which of course depends on how thick you roll out the dough and how big cookies you make. Total weight of all ingredients is slightly under 1.9kg and after the dough was made, it weighed 1.8kg, which is of course enough for a while. I kept the dough in the fridge and found it useful even after a week. I haven't tried freezing it so I don't know how good it will be...

I used some 3D printed cookie cutters to have some alternatives to my old legacy steel molds and you can find the files I used (.stl format) here:

• Cookie Cutter Windows - I made this myself.
• Cookie Cutter Linux - Slightly modified variant (only changed the height of the inner part) of the original that can be found at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5201996.
• Cookie Cutter Apple - Downloaded from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34994

I also 3D printed some simple rings that I threaded onto my rolling pin. This is to ensure that the dough was approx. 3mm thick after I rolled it out. The likelihood of these fitting any other rolling pin is pretty slim, but anyway here's the file of the rings I used:

• Rolling pin spacer ring - Self-made for a rolling pin with a diameter of 58 mm. The inner diameter of the rings is therefore 58mm and the outer diameter is 64mm, which gives a thickness of 3mm.