Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies

Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies
vegan ~ dairy-free ~ egg-free

Makes: about 40 Cookies
Total Time: about 40 minutes (includes prep)
Difficulty: Easy
Author/Credit: Jessica Williams/Vegan Rescue

Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies

These Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies embody the holiday season. I was recently thinking of my Chocolate Crinkle Cookies (recipe found here). So, I thought of these cookies after I was not able to locate my cookie cutters. A couple of years ago we sold our first home together. And in preparation for our new house, I did quite a bit of purging. With that said, I’m pretty sure my cookie cutters may have been included with the purge. That, or I just put them up somewhere and have not yet come back across them, haha.

This holiday season, I originally planned on making gingerbread men. Then, I remembered my old Chocolate Crinkle Cookies and came up with this recipe instead. These Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies are super easy to make. For instance, you just roll them into balls, refrigerate briefly to firm them up, then roll in the sugar mixture, and bake. These bake up in eleven minutes.

These cookies are perfectly soft the next day and are a great breakfast treat with coffee, in my opinion. Did I mention that these were soft? OMG, these cookies are SO soft and cake-like. These cookies are a celebration and packed with spices, from the ginger to the addition of pepper, what a surprise.

Enjoy!

Spiced Gingerbread Crinkle Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 Cup Butter-Flavored Vegetable Shortening
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup Sugar
1/3 Cup Applesauce
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup Molasses
2 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/2 Tbsp Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/4 Tsp Nutmeg
1/4 Tsp Ground Cloves
1/8 Tsp Ground Pepper

Ingredients (for Rolling):
1 Cup Powdered Sugar
2 Tbsp Raw Cane Sugar

Directions:
-Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
-In a mixing bowl, combine the butter-flavored vegetable shortening, light brown sugar, raw cane sugar, applesauce and vanilla extract (*see note below). With a hand mixture, blend ingredients to combine and cream the mixture.

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-Add the molasses to the creamed mixture and blend again to combine.

-Next, add the dry ingredients to the mixture: flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper. With the hand mixture, blend all ingredients to combine.

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-With a small cookie scoop, add a scoop of the cookie dough into your hands and roll into balls. Place the rolled cookie balls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then refrigerate.

Next, refrigerate the cookie dough balls to firm up. *Note, if you are short on time, place the cookies in the freezer for 20 minutes. Otherwise, you can refrigerate them for an hour.
-While the cookies are firming up, add the powdered sugar and raw cane sugar* to a small bowl. Mix together to combine.

-Once the cookie dough balls have firmed up, take each cookie ball and roll into the sugar mixture.

-Place the cookies on a cookie sheet lined with the parchment paper. I will typically bake 12 cookies on a large cookie sheet (13×18) to ensure there is enough spacing.
-This recipe makes about 40 cookies, which depends on the size of your rolled cookie balls.
-Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. I typically bake these for 11 minutes.
-Finally, allow the cookies to rest for a couple of minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
-Enjoy!

*Notes:
-If you watch my Instagram Reel or video for this recipe. -I forgot to add the vanilla extract at this step (whoops). I added the vanilla after the molasses step. But I typically like to include the vanilla while creaming the butter/sugar in most of my cookie recipes.
-You do not have to worry about spacing or placement on the cookie sheet during the refrigeration step. I typically roll up all of the cookie dough batter into balls. Then place them all on the same cookie sheet to save space in the refrigerator or freezer.
-For the sugar, you can use white sugar/granulated sugar instead of raw cane sugar (this is what I had available). Also, you can only use powdered sugar. I prefer using both for this cookie.   
-Store in an air-tight container.