Spooky Christmas Recipe: Halloween Gingerbread Cookies

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December blog posts are part of the 13 Days of Creepmas. This post contains affiliate links. See the end of this post and/or my disclaimer for more. This post was originally published in December 2018 and last updated in November 2022.

Gingerbread is my all-time favorite Christmas cookie. I like them thick, soft and with a hint of frosting to offset the spices.

Every December, I’d help my mom make double batches to enjoy and, of course, I think her recipe is the best. (It’s from Good Housekeeping.)

For the last few years, I’ve been wanting to give her recipe a spin while making those gingerdead men I’ve seen everywhere. The day after Thanksgiving we finally had some time to bake, and I ended up taking these cookies in a completely different direction!

Just before Halloween, I caught Michaels’ 70% off sale and grabbed two Halloween cookie cutters for 29 cents a piece. As soon as I spotted them, I knew I wanted to make gingerbread coffins and spiderwebs for Spooky Christmas! (You can’t find them at Michaels in-store or online now, but they are available on Amazon – get the spiderweb or get this set which includes a coffin.)

I added in my mom’s pumpkin (similar) and traditional gingerbread man (similar) cookie cutters too and ended up with a platter of spooky goodness to kick off the holidays:

Making these was a fun throwback to my bakery days. During summer and holidays while in college, I worked at a local bakery – a fun fact I bet you didn’t know about me!

Most of our business was decorated birthday cakes, but we did small amounts of other baked goods too. After my first summer of washing dishes, I got the responsibility of baking pies, cookies and cakes each week…plus whatever other orders came our way. (My fave was baking scones and brownies for one of our local coffee shops.)

As you can imagine during the holidays decorated cookies were a hot commodity…and one of my least favorite things to do after about a dozen, if I’m honest. It takes a lot of time to decorate cookies to the nines! My feet often ached at the end of my days working there, but in December it was always my right hand from all that decorating.

Decorating my Halloween gingerbread cookies was a fun throwback to those days, and as you can see I kept my decorating on these pretty simple.

Want to make your own? Today I’m sharing my favorite recipe:

Halloween Gingerbread Cookies

This is my personal favorite recipe for gingerbread from Good Housekeeping. Use it to bake up your own Halloween gingerbread cookies this holiday season!

Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 8 mins

Total Time 2 hrs 23 mins

Gingerbread Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg

Icing

1 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 egg white

Mix ingredients for gingerbread cookies. I typically start with the sugar, shortening and egg, then add my spices, salt and baking power/soda before slowing adding in the flour.
Once gingerbread cookie dough is mixed, shape into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap and place in fridge for at least one hour (or in freezer for 30 minutes). This will help firm up the dough so it’s easier to roll out.
After chilling, roll out dough with a rolling pin to your desired thickness on a lightly floured surface. Cut as many shapes out as possible. Continue until all dough has been used.
Place cut out cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet 1/2 inch apart. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes or until browned. Allow cookies to cool completely before icing.
To make icing, combine egg white and cream of tartar with confectioners sugar. Mix until blended (best done with an electric mixer), then beat on high until mixture is stiff enough for a knife to leave a clean-cut path.
To decorate cookies, fill a small pastry bag with icing and decorate cookies as desired. (I like these bags.) If you don’t have a pastry bag, you could substitue a sandwich bag and cut off a corner or simply ice the top of each cookie.

Store cookies in an airtight container for up to one week. (These also freeze well if you’re baking ahead!)

Here’s how I decorated my Halloween gingerbread cookies:

I really love how the coffins turned out.

I was pretty pleased with my mummy gingerbread men too. Mummys don’t get enough Halloween love, so I wanted to bring them into my Christmas season too.

Can’t go wrong with jack-o-lanterns ever when you love Halloween as much as I do!

What’s your favorite holiday cookie recipe?

I hope you’ll give this gingerbread recipe a try and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear what your favorite recipes are for holiday cookies as well! Bonus points if you share the recipe.

Happy haunting,

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