Moravian Spice Cookie Is the Best Christmas Gingerbread

What Sets Moravian Cookies Apart from the Rest

For me, Moravian spice cookies are the quintessential Christmas cookie. They have a gingerbread flavor with great keeping qualities, perfect for sending. While they store well and are wonderful for dipping in your tea, they come into their own when decorated with the royal icing that makes the simple and elegant frosted look that you can see in so many holiday cookie displays. Lacy outlines and pretty dots stand out against the deep rich brown of these molasses-based goodies.

In our family, these cookies have become a tradition, and everyone rates them as their favorite cut-out cookie. The dough must be thoroughly chilled to get that very thin, first roll that produces the tastiest cookies. I like to use darker molasses for its rich flavor, but you can use lighter types if you wish. Once they are in the oven, watch that these cookies don’t burn. Their thinness means they bake quickly, so time them and watch them, since ovens may vary.

If you try Moravian spice cookies, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how the flavor mellows with time and provides a very merry addition to your holiday dessert table.

I like to collect cookie recipe magazines that are published during the holidays. While reading an article in Cook’s magazine about how to bake the very best gingerbread cookies, I noticed that their recipe was very similar to my Moravian spice cookie recipe. Their view of what makes a great gingerbread cut-out exactly coincides with mine: flavorful, crisp, satisfying spice, stores well, sends well, and is a beautiful holiday cookie.

I use a marble rolling pin, and this set of baking essentials makes baking Moravian Spice cookies so easy! Perfect for pies and rolls as well.
I was late in coming to use the bench scraper but it makes a world of difference in many cooking and baking tasks.

Tips for Great Baking

• Use unsulphured molasses. Several brands are good: Grandma’s and Brer Rabbit are two I’ve used.
• If you wrap the dough in waxed paper or Saran wrap, it will keep refrigerated for a number of days.
• Cover the royal icing in a tightly covered container to keep it moist. It dries out very quickly.
• You can flavor the icing (try lemon) if you wish, and sprinkle with “snowy” decorative sugar.

Moravian Spice Cookies

These are our family favorites. Deeply satisfying molasses flavor and a firm, thin cookie that makes a beautiful base for simple royal icing decoration. You may substitute reconstituted powdered egg whites for fresh, if you wish.

This dough is refrigerated overnight, like many cutout cookie recipes. Keeping dough cool helps when rolling it thin.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Cook Time 8 minutes mins

Overnight chilling 1 day d

Total Time 1 day d 8 minutes mins

Servings: 3 dozen

Course: Cookies

Cuisine: Czech

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

Dough:

• 4 cups flour sifted
• 1 cup light molasses
• ½ cup butter softened
• ½ cup light brown sugar packed
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon ground allspice
• ½ teaspoon cloves
•  ½ teaspoon  salt

For Royal Frosting

• ⅓ cup egg whites (about 2 eggs)
• 3¾ to 4 cups confectioners sugar sifted

Method

 

Make the dough:

1. Sift the flour with the baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the brown sugar, butter, and molasses until well combined.
3. With a wooden spoon, stir in part of the flour mixture make a soft dough. Then, with your hands, mix in as much of the rest to make a stiff dough. (Until it is well combined).

   Form the dough into a ball. Wrap in saran wrap or wax paper and refrigerate overnight.

Make cookies:

1. The next day, preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease cookie sheets.
2. Divide the dough into 4 parts. Refrigerate until ready to roll out.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thick.
4. Use cookie cutters in your favorite shapes to cut out cookies.
5. Place cookies 1 inch apart on cookie sheets and bake 6-8 minutes. Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool.

Frost the cookies

1. Make the frosting: In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites with the powdered sugar to make a smooth, stiff frosting. Add more sugar if necessary. Cover with a damp cloth until ready to use.
2. Decorate the cookies: Pipe the frosting through #4 writing tip outlining cookies and making polka-dots.

Notes

The Moravian spice dough is stiff. It should be rolled very thin and not overbaked. This cooky keeps well and is very nice with a hot drink for dunking.  

• Use unsulphured molasses. Several brands are good: Grandma's and Brer Rabbit are two I've used.
• If you wrap the dough in waxed paper or Saran wrap, it will keep refrigerated for a number of days.
• Cover the royal icing in a tightly covered container to keep it moist. It dries out very quickly.
• You can flavor the icing (try lemon) if you wish, and sprinkle with "snowy" decorative sugar.

Christmas gingerbread

I use Airbake cookie sheets because they do make a difference in the quality of your cookies. Important when you consider the time and expense that goes into making really great Christmas cookies. For truly authentic and delicious Moravians you need to roll them out quite thinly, and that makes the edges more likely to burn. a cookie sheet like this will help prevent burnt edges and give an evenly baked cookie. I like the way the bottoms of the cookies are evenly browned.

Who Were the Moravians?

This cookie comes from the kitchens of a group of Christians who came to Colonial America from areas of Bohemia and Moravia and settled into communities. Moravians, like many people in that area of Europe came to love gingerbread cookies that combined spices in a baked treat made from rolled dough.

There are many types of gingerbread from these areas, including lebkuchen and pepperkaker.

What sets these cookies apart is how thin and crisp they are.