These thick, soft, and chewy Gingerbread Cookie Cups are topped with a creamy cookie-butter frosting. Packed with brown sugar, molasses, and warm spices, this recipe is perfect for the holidays!
Every Christmas I make several batches of Ginger Molasses Cookies, but this year I decided to switch things up a bit. These cookies are packed with flavor, and if you’re like me and you’re a fan of cookie butter, you will go crazy for this frosting – these flavors were made to be together!
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These cookie cups are
Packed with flavor: Brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, and cookie butter!
Soft and chewy: Molasses, cornstarch, and an extra egg yolk makes these cookies moist and chewy.
Topped with a cookie butter frosting: This easy frosting is made with butter, cookie butter, powdered sugar, milk, and a splash vanilla.
Perfect for the holidays: These cookie cups taste like the holidays. And your house will small amazing while they are baking.
A fun twist on traditional gingerbread cookies: Similar flavors to gingerbread with an updated presentation.
Recipe overview
Make the gingerbread cookie dough:
- Combine butter, brown sugar, and molasses. Add egg and vanilla. Add flour, baking soda, salt, cornstarch, and spices.
- Scoop the dough into 3-tablespoon portions.
- Grease a 12-count muffin pan and place a dough ball in each cavity.
- Bake for about 15 minutes. Cool completely.
Make the cookie butter frosting:
Beat butter and cookie butter until smooth and combined.
Mix in powdered sugar. Add milk until you reach your desired consistency.
Assembly:
Pipe the frosting onto the cooled cookies (I use a large open star tip). Sprinkle with crushed speculoos cookies.
What is cookie butter
Cookie butter is a spread (similar in consistency to peanut butter) that is made with crushed up spice cookies. It is sweet and creamy with a unique flavor that tastes like European speculoos/Biscoff cookies.
Recipe tips/notes
This cookie dough is sticky so using a cookie scoop makes portioning and transferring the cookie dough super easy.
Be careful not to overbake. The cookies should still be slightly underbaked in the center.
The cookies will puff up when they bake but as they cool the center will sink in a bit. This gives us a cavity to add frosting. 🙂
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Recipe
Gingerbread Cookie Cups
Ingredients
Cookie cups:
- 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour, see note about proper measuring
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 2½ teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened slightly but still cool
- ¾ cup packed light brown sugar , it should be fresh and soft
- ¼ cup unsulphured molasses
- 1 large egg, cold, straight from the fridge
- 1 large egg yolk
Frosting:
- ⅓ cup unsalted butter, softened
- generous ½ cup creamy cookie butter, I used Trader Joe's
- 2 cups powdered sugar, plus more, if needed
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2-3 tablespoons half and half or milk, plus more, if needed
- crushed Biscoff cookies, optional garnish
Instructions
Cookie cups:
- Preheat oven to 350°F with a rack in the center of the oven. Grease a 12-cup standard size muffin pan.
- Combine flour, baking soda, salt, cornstarch, and spices. Set aside.
- Using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter, brown sugar, and molasses until combined. Add egg and egg yolk, beating until combined and scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Beat in the flour mixture until fully combined.
- Scoop the dough into 3-tablespoon portions and and place one portion of dough in each of the greased muffin cups. This dough is sticky, so a cookie scoop works great for this. No need to flatten the dough balls, they'll spread and fill the cup while baking. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the cookies have puffed up and spread out and the edges are set but the center of the cookies is still slightly underdone.
- Place the muffin pan on a cooling rack and cool completely, they will firm up as they cool. Note: the center of each cookie will sink down a bit as they cool, that's ok.
Frosting:
- Using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and cookie butter until smooth. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla, then add the milk/half and half one-tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency (I used about 2 tablespoons). You can adjust the consistency by adding more powdered sugar to thicken and more milk to thin. Using a piping bag fitted with an open star tip to swirl frosting onto the top of each cookie cup. Top with crushed Biscoff cookies, if desired.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Information is an estimate based on third-party calculations and may vary based on products used and serving sizes.
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