Making Half Baked Harvest’s Soft Gingerbread Latte Cookies
Posted on December 8, 2022 Posted by Athena Scalzi 21 Comments
Well, the title really says it all! If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw me tweet about these cookies a couple days ago. A few people ended up asking me for the recipe (which I will always give because they’re never mine anyways), so I figured I’d do a post over them, give you all the recipe, and talk about how they turned out! So without further ado, here is Half Baked Harvest’s “Soft Gingerbread Latte Cookies“.
As usual, we’ll start with the ingredients:
Honestly, this recipe doesn’t call for anything too unusual. I happened to have everything on hand, but I will say espresso powder is definitely not a pantry staple for most people (the recipe says you can also use instant coffee powder, though). The same can be said about molasses; you’ll probably have to go buy that. Other than those two things, and maybe the ginger, I’d say the ingredients required are pretty standard.
Personally, I can never find espresso powder in the store. I always have to order it online. This one came from Amazon, and I would definitely recommend it, as I’m partial towards King Arthur (it’s also what flour I use).
Also, the recipe says to use salted butter, but I was fresh out so I just used unsalted and threw a big pinch of salt in the batter. Blasphemous, I know.
Moving on, the first step was to mix together the brown sugar, butter, espresso powder, and vanilla. Which looked like this:
After everything was mixed together, I noticed the recipe said to mix it until it was light and fluffy, which this minimally combined mixture was not. So I busted out my handheld electric mixer and beat it much more thoroughly until it looked more along the lines of light and fluffy:
It’s definitely hard to tell from the picture, but I can assure you it had been beaten to adequate fluffiness.
After that, I added the egg and molasses, and continued to use my electric mixer because why not:
Okay, that batter definitely looks a little less appetizing and a little more dog poopy, but let’s trust the process.
Dry ingredients added:
As you can see, even after adding all the dry ingredients, this is a pretty sticky batter. The recipe says that if it is too sticky to roll into balls, you can add an extra two or so tablespoons of flour. While the dough was definitely sticky, it wasn’t enough of a hassle rolling it into balls for me to add the flour, so I did not add any extra. Feel free to, though, working with sticky dough is annoying.
So, I used a cookie dough scooper to measure, and then rolled them in my hands into (imperfect) balls, tossed them in a bowl of granulated sugar, and put them on baking sheets lined with parchment paper:
Nine minutes later:
Tada!
And look at that cross section:
Oh yeah, I killed that shit.
This recipe was very simple! Just mix everything together in a bowl, and bake! Nothin’ to it. These cookies were quick, easy, and very spiced and gingerbread-y tasting. And it didn’t use that many dishes, either, which is always a plus.
And yes, the recipe does call for icing on these cookies, but after tasting them, I decided they didn’t need any, so I didn’t make it. If you end up making it with the icing, be sure to let me know how it is!
Do you like gingerbread? Do you make cookies around the holidays? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
Your Dad needs to get you a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for Christmas. Something like this: https://www.kitchenaid.com/countertop-appliances/stand-mixers/tilt-head-stand-mixers/p.artisan-series-5-quart-tilt-head-stand-mixer.ksm150psmh.html?
I have one and it’s awesome.
Hooray, another Athena Baking post!
Those cookies look AWESOME and I would totally try them – I loves me some good gingerbread, especially around this time of year. Great job with the process, too!
And yes, as a matter of fact, I do make cookies around the holidays. I purposely get all my shopping, wrapping, decorating, cards and the rest out of the way by the end of November so that I can play with butter and sugar and flour and spices all through December. I’ve made four varieties so far this month, and I’ve got my eyes on three more that I want to tackle if I have the energy.
To be fair, it is an inherited trait. My late mother (who worked fulltime as an RN) would start baking the weekend before Thanksgiving and would continue right up through Christmas Eve, producing double and triple batches of anywhere from 15 to 30 different varieties of cookies. Everyone – and I do mean EVERYONE – would get a platter of cookies. Family, teachers and co-workers all got platters, but Mom didn’t stop there. Every single neighbor up and down the street got a platter, the mailman got a platter, and on the last trash day before the holiday, she’d send me running out to the street to meet the trash truck with platters of cookies for the garbage collectors.
I can’t hold a candle to that, but there are a few of her recipes that I still make every year because they just scream CHRISTMAS to me.
Pepparkakor is one of my favorites – it is a Swedish gingerbread recipe flavored with orange rind and cardamom that is unbelievably good. Lebkuchen (honey cakes) is another favorite, spicy and chock full of nuts and candied citron. And then there’s the one that our family used to call Gleason Gears, although technically the correct name is Frosty Anise Rosettes. So many favorites! And so many memories with all of them!
Happy baking, Athena, and very happy holidays to you and your family! Thanks for sharing another great baking story!
Omg, these look amazing! I love ginger/ molasses cookies and I love coffee (molasses and espresso powder are both baking staples in my house), so I think these will be incredible. Thanks so much for posting, I can’t wait to try them! Hot cookie baking tip: any kind of sticky cookie dough (especially molasses cookies) will be a lot easier to work with if you put it in the fridge for half an hour or so. You don’t even need to cover the bowl! If it stays in too long it will get stiff and hard to work with again, so I usually set a timer so I don’t get distracted and forget about it. Happy baking and thanks again for sharing!
Oooh, these look my kind of cookie. My husband was into making ginger snaps for a while but I have never cared for crispy cookies. These look like they are nice and chewy and scrumptious. Off to check the website for the recipe. Thanks for posting!
By popular demand I am making a gingerbread house for staff at the library this year, first since COVID.
There is never anything blasphemous about using unsalted butter and some salt in place of salted butter. Salted butter is an abomination, an anachronism from a time before refrigeration was readily available.
That goes triple for baking. No baking recipe should ever call for salted butter; fine control over proportions is so critical in baking!
Want to make your own espresso powder? If there’s a decent coffee place where you are, ask them for some spent espresso grounds (the little “pucks” out of the espresso machine). Spread them out on a baking sheet, dry them out in a low oven, then grind them very fine in one of those little “propeller” coffee grinders if you have one…or a blender if you don’t.
We drink espressos every day from our home machine–I flatter myself that I’ve become as competent a barista as I can be without multiple piercings, ink, and weird hair colors–and the grounds end up in the compost.
Those cookies look great!
Thanks!
Now you made me hungry for Ginger cookies…
Keep up the good (and delicious!) work!
I’ve noticed that baked goods with spices often taste better the next day (for instance, pumpkin pie).
So I’m curious, if your batch lasted more than a day, did they taste better the second day?
Came here to post exactly what wiredog said. You’re ready for a stand mixer for sure. And Kitchenaid is also my recommendation.
I have a very similar recipe (minus the espresso powder, which I may have to try this year), and I would suggest adding a little cinnamon to the sugar you roll the cookies in prior to baking.
I haven’t looked to see what icing this recipe has, but my recipe calls for almond bark (vanilla). Melt the bark and dip half the cookie in it. I normally don’t like white chocolate or almond bark but i love it on these cookies.
I also second the suggestion of getting a stand mixer, they are wonderful for baking!
Darn those look good!
I agree, a stand mixer will change your life. And they’re now available in such pretty colors and with fancy bowls too! I always have ginger and molasses in my pantry, and I get a little nervous when the molasses is running low. This is because my favorite easy cake is gingerbread, and I also love molasses and ginger in muffins and anything else you can bake.
Enjoy your perfect holiday cookie!
I love my KitchenAid mixer. My mom gave it to me for Christmas decades ago and I use it several tya week. Makes baking so much easier. Also, you did right with the unsalted butter. Salted butter is often too salty and the salt changes the texture and melting temperature. Also, also, whenever a recipe asks for butter and sugar (and salt) to be beaten together, longer is better. Whip that mix for five to six minutes, and your cookies will always be great. Again, a KitchenAid mixer using the whisk attachment will make it easier. Great recipe!
They look yummy! I’d have to make two batches, though; one with espresso for my sister and one without for me.
We don’t bake a lot, but we love to make jam!
I love gingerbread, and more importantly I’m trying to use up some kinda old molasses. So thanks!
Those look so good. I love ginger cookies, snappy or soft. Am almost tempted to make some myself. :-)
I’m not much of a baker, but I’d like to second (or third, or fourth) everything everyone has said about the KitchenAid Stand-mixer. I still have my mother’s, which I (very) occasionally break out when I’m feeling ambitious; it’s over 70 years old and still going strong!
King Arthur is the best. It is an employee owned company and I patronize those whenever I can. It helps that it is also the best flour for everything except biscuits.
My mother found some gingerbread cake mix that I think she bought last year. She was going to make cookies out of the cake mix for Thanksgiving. She had wanted me to take them to our family get-together at my great-aunt’s house. But after eating one, I decided for us to keep them. lol
Then my mother got some more gingerbread cake mix and made some more cookies last week. We are down to the last cookie. They are so good.
I don’t bake as much as I used to, but I tweaked a gingersnap recipe that I made at Christmastime for many years (twice the spices and half the sugar; kids didn’t like them much but adults raved, a hit at parties). These look good too, and AWGO (as we get older) my friends are twitchy about their teeth so it might be time for softer cookies.