Soft Glazed Gingerbread

Finally GF! Same dough can make thin, crisp sandwich cookies or a gingerbread house

Hello everyone!

First, a quick poll:

Well, it’s the first week of December, and I’m counting off the Fridays before the holiday season in terms of what to post each week as we approach New Year’s Eve. This week seemed like the perfect time to work on a gluten-free version of one of Tartine’s most-loved holiday treats, Soft Glazed Gingerbread.

I’ve been making this recipe since our days in West Marin when we were a 2-person operation and still selling at farmer’s markets, yet I’ve never developed a gluten-free version, so the time is nigh!

This soft version is a nice alternative to crisp gingerbread cookies—it’s highly spiced with cinnamon and ginger, but also with a good amount of clove and finely ground black pepper. Because it’s rolled thicker and has a sugar glaze, it almost seems more like a bar cookie—although with this recipe, if you roll it thin and bake it a little longer, it also makes an exceptional crisp cookie. This recipe, based on the one I developed years ago, also happens to hold an impression really well; at the bakery I use a patterned pin that I originally purchased from Sur la Table (it looks like they no longer offer them), but there are lots of pins on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon that work, too.

I’ve been making gingerbread in one form or another since I was a little kid, when my mom made gingerbread houses with us and decorated cookies. Our local art center in upstate NY would host a holiday crafts fair and organized a yearly gingerbread house village which we always contributed to.

One year my dad won an award for “most creative gingerbread house” from Grandma’s Molasses for a Mississippi river paddle boat he made. He built the hull of the ship around a giant oval Le Crueset braiser, and built the masts, flags, and other details out of caramelized sugar. I don’t know how he got it to the art center in once piece, driving along the miles of pot-holed, back dirt roads to get there.

Here’s a Prueitt family album of gingerbread from the ‘70s: houses, a general store, and paddle boat, all perfectly imperfect and full of character (the paddle boat has West Point and the Hudson River in the background):

Prueitt family album of gingerbread houses from the late '70s. Houses by my mom and sisters, paddle boat and general store by dad.

You can use this recipe to make a gingerbread house; depending on the size of your house, you may need to double the recipe. There’s lots of templates online as well, such as this one from the New York Times.

I mean to make a house every year, but I get short on time and I’m long on big ideas for elaborate designs. This year maybe I’ll just make something small and simple that won’t take days to make.

On left, soft glazed gingerbread deer with glaze. On right, crisp gingerbread sandwich cookies with a confectioners' sugar buttercream filling. The deer are made with a stamp and cut out with a circle cookie cutter, and the sandwich cookies were made using a patterned pin and cut with a pastry wheel.

Tools you may need:

• Wood cookie stamp, 2.5-inches. I got the deer and a few other designs from this seller, and they have a huge selection of great designs and also sell on Etsy.

• Pastry wheel/ravioli cutter makes a really nicely finished edge to cookies

• Patterned pin: I have one like this, but I bought it ages ago and don’t know which seller I purchased from. This one looks the same, or this one too

• Half sheet pan from Nordic Ware - I’ve been trying these out and like them

• Silicone baking sheets: Amazon Basics makes them, or the original Silpat, or lots of other brands

• A small offset metal spatula helps separate cookies and is a very useful baking tool. There’s a wooden handled one or plastic handled one, both from Ateco

• Set of round cookie cutters which I find invaluable (doughnuts, cookies, shaping baked cookies, or used as stencils)