Gingerbread Cookies with Dippable Buttercream Frosting

This year I decided to try something new.  I decided to make gingerbread cookies!  I know that might not seem like a big deal to many of you, but I usually buy my gingerbread, not bake it.  So this year I wanted to change things up, try something new and get a little creative in the process.  One of the things holding me back from baking my own gingerbread cookies was icing them.  I don't particularly love royal icing but I do love the smooth look on gingerbread cookies.  I don't love how it tastes or the time and effort it takes to make it and I don't love that it requires special ingredients that I don't typically keep on hand.  So this year I decided to try something different!  I decided to come up with a dippable buttercream frosting that I could use to get a royal frosting look on my gingerbread cookies.  I snagged my kids and their cousin to help me out with icing the cookies and they had a blast!  This dippable buttercream frosting is easy enough for kids to work with and the best part is that it tastes so much better than royal frosting!  Which gives you delicious gingerbread man cookies topped with a scrumptious buttercream frosting instead of teeth-cracking royal icing.  Yum.  Can I be honest and tell you the entire batch of cookies was nearly gone the same day!?  They were a huge hit in my house and I think you will like them too.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Huggies®.  As always, all opinions are my own. 

I began by using this recipe here to make my gingerbread cookies.  This recipe creates a very soft dough and I found I needed to knead more flour into the dough before I rolled it.  But it does make a softer cookie that is really yummy and my whole family liked it.

Once the cookie dough was made, cooled, rolled, baked and the cookies were cooled, we got to work on our icing.

Dippable Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 stick (½ cup) Salted Butter, softened
• 4 cups Powdered Sugar
• ½ Tablespoon (or more to taste) Vanilla Extract
• 3 Tablespoons + more Milk

Directions:

1. Beat together all ingredients, adding milk one tablespoon at a time until a thick, fluffy consistency is achieved.  Adjust your vanilla extract to taste as well.  You might prefer anywhere from ½ Tablespoon to 1 Tablespoons (or even a bit more) of vanilla depending on preference.  Also, I always begin with only a couple Tablespoons of milk and add a little bit at a time until my frosting is the right consistency.  If you add too much milk, add more powdered sugar to thicken the frosting back up again.
2. Once the frosting is made, place about a cup of frosting into a microwave safe dish.  Heat on high for 20 seconds at a time until frosting is very thin and runs off a spoon easily.
3. Dip cookie top into icing and gently shake off or wipe off any excess frosting.  (Note that this frosting will thicken fairly quickly so dip the cookies quickly and heat up more frosting as needed.)
4. Allow frosting to set on cookies completely.

This frosting will not be as hard as royal icing, but you can stack the cookies once the frosting has cooled off.  They might stick together just a bit but they will look pretty and taste amazing!  Buttercream frosting on gingerbread cookies is so incredibly delicious and this is a great way to achieve a similar smooth frosting look without using royal icing.

My two kids and their cousin had so much fun icing these cookies!  It didn't take very long and they had a blast doing it.  They also decorated a few with sprinkles.  Everyone really enjoyed themselves and they also enjoyed eating the cookies too.

Which was so much fun!

And it left me with a big mess to clean up!  Letting young children ice and decorate cookies can be one of the messiest activities, so as soon as they were done, I grabbed my container of Huggies® Wipes and went to work cleaning the counter.

I gave each of the kids a wipe and they cleaned their hands off too.  Did you know that only Huggies® Wipes has triple layers?  They're gentle to the touch but still tough on messes like the one we created.

I know I have said it before, but Huggies® Wipes are my go-to option for quick cleaning in the kitchen and for cleaning little hands too!  They are perfect for getting icing off of fingers and off of the counter.

And they make quick work of rounding up stray sprinkles and crumbs too.

Gingerbread Decorating Day is on December 10, 2016 and this recipe for dippable buttercream frosting makes celebrating this day with your family even more fun and delicious!

Be sure to enter the Huggies® #HugTheMessSweepstakes by sharing messy family photos across Instagram or Twitter.  And engage with Huggies® on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

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