Gingerbread Gentlemen

My second holiday post for this year: Gingerbread Gentlemen.

Every year at Christmas, ever since I started baking 4 years ago, I've been making my go-to Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookie recipe to share with friends and family. To keep things interesting, last year I started playing around with the appearance of my gingerbread men and made Gingy-bread Men (a la Shrek). This year, to mix things up, I stuck to royal icing and made Gingerbread Gentlemen.

They're one part Victorian men's fashion, one part Mr. Moneybags, and one part Mr. Peanut, which combines so many things I like: the 19th century*, board games, pop culture cartoons, fancy schmancy accessories (bow ties, top hats, monocles, and walking sticks**), and of course, mustached cookies. Win? You bet :P. They seemed to be many of my friends' favorite cookie out of all my holiday cookies.

*more specifically: art, literature, and history
**too bad there wasn't room for pocket squares and braces/suspenders

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.