Gingerbread Cookie Cups

Gingerbread cookie cup topped with light brown frosting with a bite taken out of it.

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!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 14

Total Time 34

Servings

Calories 405kcal

Author Allison - Celebrating Sweets

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

Measuring flour: Whisk the flour in the flour container to lighten it. Lightly scoop a heaping portion then level it off with the back of a knife. This ensures that the flour is not over-measured and packed into the cup.

Tips:

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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