Gingy-bread Men

Yes, that's right: "Gingy"-bread Men. Anyone here like Shrek? Well, my favorite Shrek character happens to be Gingy! So I thought that this year, instead of the minimal gingerbread men decoration that I usually do, I would decorate my cookies to look like Gingy.

I used my favorite thick and chewy gingerbread cookie recipe and opted to decorate the cookies with a traditional royal icing. What makes Gingy so "Gingy-like" are: white squiggles, white leg stitches (after he's tortured, of course), white dot eyes, a red mouth, and lavender eyebrows. Oh, and of course his purple gum drop buttons. My favorite part of these cookies are definitely the candy buttons.

Decorating Gingy Cookies

Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Men
Royal Icing (recipe below)
Purple Gum Drops (instructions below)
pearl milk tea straw
knife
red food coloring
purple food coloring

Follow the recipe for the thick and chewy gingerbread men. If you need help shaping your dough cut-outs, look at the edit note at the end of this post. Then bake as indicated in the recipe. Let cool on a wire rack and once the cookies are totally cool, you can decorate.

*Edit 12/11/11:
Gumdrop Buttons

1) Use kitchen shears or a knife to cut off the tops and bottoms of the purple gumdrops
2) Lay them sticky side down on a piece of parchment or wax paper
3) Use a large straw to cut out circles for gumdrop buttons
4) Place them sticky side down back on the parchment or wax paper and set aside for later

Icing the Cookies

1) While the cookies are fresh out of the oven, take the blunt edge of a butter knife and make shallow dents where the knees should be so the legs look "broken"
2) Make the Royal Icing recipe below and decorate as above, pipe on the icing to create the borders and "stitches"
3) Add the purple gumdrops buttons, the sides that don't have sugar should be sticky enough to stick when pressed to the cookie (if not, glue them on with royal icing)
4) Tint a little of the royal icing with red food coloring and use a toothpick to draw on a mouth with the icing
5) Use the toothpick to dot on eyes
6) Tint a little of the royal icing lavender with the purple food coloring and use that icing the draw on eyebrows

Royal Icing Recipe
adapted from Wilton

1 tbsp meringue powder
1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
3 1/2 tbsp warm water

Mix the meringue powder with the powdered sugar. Add the warm water. Use a mixer on high speed and beat until stiff peaks form in the icing, 5-10 minutes.

Note: If you can't find meringue powder, there are more traditional royal icing recipes that use raw egg whites (meringue powder here acts as a substitute for egg whites). For example, on Joy of Baking.

*Edit 12/11/11:
How to Make Gingy Cut-outs
I remember last year some of you wanted to know how I made my cut-outs and what cookie cutter I used. But of course that all got deleted sometime since then, so I'll try my best to re-type everything I had up before.

First of all, this is the cookie cutter I used. It's the same one that I used for my gingerbread men back in 2009.   If you click on the link and take a look, you'll see the shape of those cookies is different from Gingy's shape. That's because the dough does spread out and puff up in the oven (the original cut-outs don't look the same as the final cookie). I didn't want to go out and buy a new cookie cutter, so I just make alterations to my dough cut-outs before I put them in the oven.

1) Place dough cut-outs onto a parchment lined baking sheet
2) Lift the arms of the dough cut-out and pull down the feet to make longer, slimmer legs
3) Use a knife to trim around the neck area and arms to form a neck and thinner arms

Note: My cookie cutter was one in a huge set of assorted plastic cookie cutters (I got it more than 10 years ago from Costco, I think). It's about 2 1/2 inches tall (head to foot) and 2 inches wide (arm span). I'm pretty sure they don't make them anymore, but there are many similar ones available online.

Also, I know when the Shrek Movie first came out, there was a Shrek Cookie Cutter set with a Gingy cookie cutter (+Shrek, Donkey, and a Castle). You can probably still find it on Ebay.

Another alternative is to find a bear/teddy bear cutter that looks approximately like the person cutter and just use a knife to trim off the ears of the dough cut-outs. Any gingerbread man cut-out can be trimmed with a knife to look like Gingy.

If all else fails, do as I do for tough cookie shapes: Google Image a picture of Gingy, shrink it down on MS Word, print it out, cut it out, spray the paper with nonstick spray, and use it as a stencil.