I had a whirlwind of a week! Christmas season is in full-swing and I’ve been busy wrapping gifts, baking cookies, and preparing for new opportunities. 2026 is going to be a big year for me to share my food with more people in person. Which I’m so excited about! For now, I’m showing you how to make my gingerbread shortbread cookies. Made with brown butter, of course, spices, molasses, and more. 

Gingerbread Shortbread

Monday started with great news. A business opportunity that will establish 2026 as my year of cooking. More on that soon. But if you live in Maine, I’m excited to have the chance to cook for you in person. I’ve been developing menus, brainstorming ideas, and driving down the coast for meetings. I turned 30 a few months ago, which has put a little pep in my step. I’m sick of hiding myself away and keeping my recipes behind a screen. 2026 will be a big opportunity to grow. 

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the holiday season. I’ve been extra prepared this year with ordering and wrapping gifts. Reflective, sparkly paper piles of boxes are piled in the basement already. The last few things are arriving soon. My mind has been focused on good food and great recipes and I’m stocked with all the ingredients for my Christmas breakfast tradition, pecan sticky buns. I probably made them for the first time 10 or 15 years ago. And I force myself to ignore them for 11 months out of the year so that tasting them on Christmas morning is extra special.

New Projects + Good Food

I spent Wednesday driving through the Midcoast to scout the venue for my 2026 culinary project. I’ve been meeting new people and trying to sell myself, which is always weird. I’m proud, though, that I’ve decided to take more chances this year and to invest in my talents. To give myself a chance to connect with more people. So, Wednesday was very exciting, despite barely sleeping from excitement. On the way home I met my mom at the grocery store and I picked up a few candies and things for stocking stuffers. 

Wednesday night was the Survivor finale. Survivor is my favorite show ever, so it’s always an event to gather around the TV for finale night. I was very happy with the outcome. And seeing people starve on an island and crawl through mud for a million dollars reminded me that I am capable of doing hard things, too. We ate burgers for dinner, as usual, and then I watched the after show alone in bed. 

Dreaming of Gingerbread

I got to sleep fairly early. When I woke up, I was exhausted, but I felt excited for a day of errands and shopping with my mom. We visited the doctor, the DMV, and had lunch at our favorite cafe in my college town. We always order the same thing – a delicious turkey, apple, and cheese panini. I get pesto mayo. She gets cranberry mayo. We usually split a bag of rosemary potato chips. And we always pick up desserts after. When I got home, I took a fat nap and tried some peppermint chocolate cookies we bought. 

So, after a packed week, Friday was my first opportunity to bake. And I was really excited for this one. For weeks I’ve had my eye on one essential Christmas staple: Gingerbread. Probably my favorite seasonal flavor of dessert, perfect for cookies, cakes, and more. So, I’ve been planning to create a recipe for a while that is packed with spices and molasses. I wanted to make something unique and non-traditional, rather than simply making gingerbread men or gingerbread cake like last year. So, I decided to make gingerbread shortbread.

My First Shortbread

Shortbread is one of my favorite things. It all started with a lemon rosemary shortbread cookie at my job in Boston one summer during college. A mysterious baker left them in the break room for everyone to try. They were lemony, herbaceous, and topped with flecks of delicious sea salt. I was completely hooked on them. Every half hour or so I would take a short walk from my desk to get “coffee” or “water” and I would take another cookie. Something about them was irresistible. By the end of each day there was only crumbs left. 

A few years later my mom and I tried a delicious shortbread recipe from a farm stand at our local farmers market. They still sell there each summer. He makes dark chocolate, lime sea salt, ginger, and more. So this week I wanted to make a new variation with my beloved shortbread recipe, which started off as a copycat lemon rosemary flavor. My challenge was to pack as much gingerbread flavor as possible into the dough. It’s a stiff dough, and molasses is wet, so the puzzle was figuring out how to add more flavor without compromising texture. 

Gingerbread Brown Butter

I decided to infuse molasses and spices into my butter. And of course, like almost every week here, I make brown butter. Because it makes everything better. I started baking after a lunch of leftover Chinese food during a dark and dreary wind storm. We were on power outage watch all day, fearful of the foreboding sky, the spitting rain, and the howling wind. We were even issued a severe wind warning. I tried to start early enough to beat the worst of the storm. And I began by making gingerbread brown butter.

When my butter melted down, it bubbled and clouded and took on a golden hue. I quickly took it off the heat and whisked in my gingerbread spices. Molasses. And a little bit of cream to replace the evaporated moisture. I also added a splash of vanilla for flavor. It all stirred together into a glorious, amber-colored potion that smelled like a melted gingerbread candle. My gingerbread shortbread needed to use softened, semi-stiff butter. So I poured the brown butter into a bowl and let it chill in the freezer for a couple dozen minutes. 

A Spiced, Molasses Dough

Every few minutes I checked on the butter and gave it a stir. And I huddled close to the window to try to take good photos of my recipe, despite the grey, stormy sky. I said a little plea to mother nature that we’d have power long enough to get the cookies baked. I needed time to paint and write on Saturday. Once my butter was firm, I gave it a thorough mix and it looked ready to go. Just to be sure, I put it back in to chill as I measured my flour, salt, and sugar. And I readied my stand mixer on the counter with the paddle attachment. 

First I scraped every last bit of brown butter into the bowl of the stand mixer. Then I added my sugar and flipped on the mixer, which squealed in delight and creamed the mixture into a beautiful pale brown cloud. I poured in my flour and let the mixer go again, on low speed, until the dough came together into a ball. It looked good – not too wet. A perfect gingerbread shortbread dough that I managed to pack with flavor. A big win.

Rolling Shortbread

Next I spread my dough out on the counter with a touch of flour to keep it from sticking. And I purposely left the dough thicker than usual to create a hefty, chewy gingerbread shortbread. For some reason this was a must for me – in my head they were always meant to be thick. Suddenly I realized I had no cookie cutter. And my heart sank when I realized that all the cookie cutters, which sat in the hallway for years, were tucked into the organized boxes of old items in our basement. I intended to look for them quickly and get back to my dough. 

But my ADHD kicked in, and 30 minutes went by. 30 minutes of me crouching in a basement crawlspace, moving heavy boxes at awkward angles in a puzzle of frustrating pain. When I finally reached the kitchen items box, I realized it was just old mugs and cups wrapped in tissue paper. No cookie cutters. So I put everything back to the way it was and defeatedly stomped back upstairs. Huffing and puffing and probably looking like one of the robbers in Home Alone. I decided to just give up on my gingerbread men.

A Gingerbread Stencil

I would just make them square, or circular, or maybe tree-shaped. But my heart longed for those festive human-shaped gingerbread shortbread cookies I dreamed of. Half-dipped in glaze, like a royal tuxedo. Stubbornly I spent the next few minutes drawing a stencil and cutting it out of card stock with dull scissors until I had a half-decent gingerbread man shape. When I made it back to my dough, it was warm and slicked with a sheen of melting butter. So I placed it in the fridge to chill first. 

Then, I went to town, tracing and cutting imperfect gingerbread men with a pairing knife. It took forever, and tested my patience. Each one was a delicate dough, too, that I tried so hard to spatula onto a baking sheet without decapitating them. Finally, after another half hour or so, I had a tray full of soldiers. Nice and thick with slightly irregular and odd legs, arms, and heads. But there was something charming about them. I scooped up the rest of the dough into a ball, rolled it back out, and cut out simple circles. 

Finally Baking

The exciting part was kneeling in front of the oven as they baked. I chilled the gingerbread shortbreads in the freezer for 10 minutes beforehand so that they wouldn’t spread. Thank goodness it worked. The wind was howling and slamming into the house, so every extra minute in the oven was a triumph. After 16 minutes I took them out. No spread, a deep golden brown color, and the signature brown silhouette of a gingerbread man. I let them chill and baked my circles, too. And after a few minutes I grew impatient and ripped off a leg to try. 

It melted in my mouth. Like a good shortbread. Somehow firm and crumbly but moist, buttery, and flavorful. At first I was skeptical that I infused enough spices into the dough. And I went heavy with it! I even used fresh ginger in the brown butter. But as I ate I started to spot the cinnamon, ginger, clove, and molasses. With a pop of sea salt on top of it all. They were still warm, and tasted incredibly delicious. I tried to take photos of them all lined up on my baking sheet, but the light was fading. The storm was deepening. 

Coffee Royal Icing

I waited until the next day. Which was hard. I took a few bites of the circular cookies after they came out of the oven and even had one for dessert. All that was left to do was create a glaze for the gingerbread shortbread, which I knew could take them from amazing to incredible. I floated ideas – coffee royal icing. Lemon zest. Molasses mixed with powdered sugar for more gingerbread flavor. Ultimately I decided to go for the first option with a traditional royal icing and a touch of coffee extract. 

When I first learned to make gingerbread it was a recipe from Flour by Joanne Chang. My baking bible. She soaked her gingerbread in coffee milk, which was incredible, which started to tie gingerbread to coffee in my mind. They both have deep, roasted, spicy notes, so it makes sense. I spent the next few minutes artfully dipping my men into the glaze, only coating half of them. For two reasons – for art’s sake and so that you can choose your own adventure when you eat them. And now I can’t tell which I like more – the plain cookie or the cookie with icing. 

Thankfully, I love both. And this gingerbread shortbread is an incredibly short, buttery, and gingerbread-packed bite. I’m confident that anyone who loves shortbread and gingerbread would struggle to put these down. And I can’t wait to make these again and try a different glaze! Maybe orange zest next time? You can’t beat these warm out of the oven. Incredibly tasty. 

Thank you for reading, as always! Be sure to check out my recipe cards and art prints on Etsy. Use code THEFORKEDRING for 25% off. And check out my new recipes by mail subscription. Have a great Christmas!

Print Pin

Gingerbread Shortbread

A buttery, rich gingerbread cookie with molasses, spices, and brown butter

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword berry cookies, gingerbread, shortbread

Prep Time 1 hour hour

Cook Time 16 minutes minutes

Servings 16

Author theforkedring

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 sticks butter at room temperature
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 tbsp fresh ginger
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 2 tbsp heavy cream
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups AP flour

Instructions

• Heat butter in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Cook until melted and beginning to turn golden brown.
• Remove from heat and add molasses, fresh ginger, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, heavy cream, and vanilla.
• Pour brown butter mixture into a heat-proof bowl and chill in the freezer for 15-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until butter is the texture of a regular stick of butter left out at room temperature.
• Transfer butter to the bowl of a stand mixer. Add brown sugar and mix on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
• Turn mixer speed down to low and add the salt and flour. Mix just until combined.
• Lightly flour a work surface and roll your dough into a large rectangle until it’s 3/4″ thick.
• Cut out 12-16 gingerbread shortbreads with a gingerbread man cookie cutter. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet.
• Preheat oven to 350°F and place sheet tray of cookies in the freezer for 10 minutes until firm.
• Bake for 16-18 minutes until slightly golden brown and firm. Let chill and eat plain or coated in royal icing.

Notes

• The dough will clump into a ball when it’s ready to remove from the stand mixer.
• Your dough shouldn’t stick because of the high butter content. If it does, add a little flour at a time to the work surface. 
• The texture of your butter, once fully chilled, should be thick and slightly hard to mix, yet malleable.