Fairy Gingerbread Recipe

More than just a recipe, gingerbread is an experience: an aroma that fills the home with holiday cheer, a tradition that bridges generations, and a taste that perfectly balances warmth and sweetness. Gingerbread has delighted taste buds for centuries with its perfect blend of sweet and spicy flavors.

This timeless treat, often associated with festive occasions like Christmas, boasts a rich history that dates back to ancient civilizations. Crafted with a unique mix of ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, gingerbread has evolved from its humble beginnings to become a holiday staple in many cultures around the world. In this article, I’ll show you how to make the ultimate gingerbread recipe at home.

How did I find this recipe? Sometimes, when no book will put me to sleep, I resort to channel surfing.  Long past the witching hour the other night, I landed upon an episode of America’s Test Kitchen.

I secretly adore the blind product tasting segments on ATK. Don’t judge, that’s like a game show for the food nerds (surprise, you chose the cheap mega-mart bacon over the $35/lb imported variety! or fooled you! we slipped a homemade version into the tasting and that’s the one you like best, ah-hahaha!). But in general, the recipe segments lose me. I mean, the whole business of testing a recipe hundreds of time, the precision, the frequency with which they whip out rulers, the intellectual approach to cooking, while I appreciate it, ain’t exactly my bag. I was about to click away when I perked up at the recipe tease: fairy gingerbread.

Fairy whaaaa?

Ok, you’ve sucked in another insomniac, Cris Kringle, er Kimball. Turns out that fairy gingerbread is a thin version of the beloved cookie meant to be presented like a snackable deck of cards during a game of Euchre. Huh, who knew? Charming, though, don’t you think? No rolling, no man-shaped cookie cutter-ing, no elaborate decorating required. I’m in!

I did my best to scribble down the recipe in my own words by the light of the moon, and recreated it the next day. I omitted the ground ginger because I had none. Instead, I used only freshly grated ginger, then amped up the spiciness with black pepper, and corkscrewed in resinous and citrus notes with the addition of pine needles. The result is a wafer-thin, brittle, super spicy cookie, the kind that just begs to be served with a strong cup of tea. Please note: no fairies were harmed in the making of these cookies.

Fairy Gingerbread Recipe

Enjoy the spicy, sweet notes of this gingerbread for a cozy holiday treat at home.

Ingredients you’ll need…

• 5 Tbsp butter, room temperature

• 9 Tbsp brown sugar

• 4 tsp finely grated fresh ginger

• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract

• 3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp flour or gluten-free flour blend of your choice (see note below)

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1 tsp finely ground black pepper

• 2 tsp finely ground fragrant pine needles

• 1/4 cup milk

Note: I used a gluten-free combination of sorghum flour, rice flour, arrowroot, and xanthan gum. You could also use gluten-full all-purpose flour.

Yield: 2 half cookie sheet pans of fairy gingerbread

1. Cream together the butter and sugar until it looks as if the sugar has mostly dissolved, and the butter has become a little fluffy.
2. Stir in the grated ginger and vanilla.
3. In a small bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, and pine.
4. Add half of the milk to the creamed butter, and stir to combine. Add half of the dry ingredients, and stir the batter until it is smooth. Stir in the rest of the milk, then the rest of the dry ingredients.
5. Use an offset spatula to spread half of the batter onto each of two parchment-lined half sheet pans. Spread it over the paper as thinly as possible in the shape of a rectangle. If you are chronically anal-retentive, like the cooks on America’s Test Kitchen, then you will be able to execute a perfect rectangle. Also, you will have already marked your parchment paper with a ruler with guides to cutting the cookies after they bake. If you are like me, you’ll slop out something rather rectangular-ish, and call it good.
6. Bake the cookies in a 325° F oven for 15–18 minutes, rotating the pans midway through that time. Keep a very close eye on the cookies as they bake. Being so thin, they go from looking raw to overcooked in a jiff. Yes, I just said jiff. I’m bringing jiff back. Watch out, I’m also bringing back spiffy. But I digress… Look to pull the cookies out of the oven when they are mostly medium brown.
7. As soon as you take the cookies out of the oven, use a greased pizza wheel to cut them into rectangles. Maybe you will have pre-measured your parchment so that you can cut your cookies into perfectly little rectangles the size of playing cards. If you are like me, you will end up with rectangles of every size, and not much care.
8. Once the cookies have completely cooled, carefully go back over the cuts with a pizza wheel or a paring knife. Do this gently because they will be prone to crumbling at this point. Then, all that remains is to peel them off the parchment paper.

Ginger Benefits (Zingiber officinale)

This warming spice has a knack for supporting healthy digestion and immunity.

Black Pepper Benefits (Piper nigrum)

Black pepper can kickstart stagnant digestion and promote healthy circulation.

Pine Needles Benefits (Pinus spp.)

Pine needles make for a wonderful herbal ally during colds: they can soothe a sore throat and reduce congestion.

Here are some frequently asked questions about ginger bread…

Can I make this recipe for Christmas cookies?

Yes, these gingerbread cookies make for a fantastic Christmas cookie. They are very thin gingerbread cookies, but if you wanted to frost them for some cookie decorating time, you could experiment with using a piping bag to add some icing after the cooling process. Perfect for holiday cheer!

Can I make a gingerbread house with these cookies?

While these gingerbread cookies are delicious, they aren’t the best gingerbread cookie recipe for a gingerbread house: they are relatively thin and brittle. For a gingerbread house, you generally want to avoid using soft gingerbread cookies and very thin gingerbread cookies because they probably won’t make for a structurally-sound gingerbread house.

What other spice flavors could I add to this recipe?

You could experiment with adding a wide variety of other warming herbs and spices, including ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, and more. Enjoy!

Written by Wendy Petty

Wendy Petty is a wild foods enthusiast and foraging instructor. She teaches cooking classes with an emphasis on transforming abundant, "weedy" plants into nutritious and economical kitchen staples. Foraging is both her work and passion, and she enjoys spending most of her free time pursuing, preparing, storing, and studying wild edible plants.