Time for some yummy stuff!
Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
Circle Cookie Cutter and/or Biscuit Cutter (For donuts, use a biscuit cutter for the outer ring, and piping tip for the inner circle. For mini donuts, I used the coupler from my piping bag and a smaller piping tip. Pretty much anything round + sized appropriately works!)
Royal Icing Recipe (you can divide in half and add a bit of pink food coloring to one half.)
Piping Bag Fitted with a Large Tip
Sprinkles and/or Smaller Pastry Tip (Or just use a plastic sandwich bag cuz you can!) for Decorating
1.Whip up your gingerbread cookie recipe just as you would if you were making another shape. Roll it out according to the recipe instructions and cut large circles with your biscuit/cookie cutter. Then cut a smaller circle in the center of each. Keep re-rolling your dough until you've gotten all the donuts you can get out of it! Then pop 'em in the oven and bake. Depending on the size you make your donuts, you'll need to adjust your baking time. I baked the larger ones for 6-7 minutes, and the smaller for 5 minutes.
2
Now it's time to ice these babies! By the way, royal icing totally intimidates me. I was pretty scared of it, but through my searching, found Sweetopia's awesome illustration and video and it got mthrough! Now, I decided to make my icing thicker than directed because I wanted it to be a bit more organic looking than the typical perfect royal icing you see on cookies. I know, that's probably totally contradictory to the point of royal icing and all you pro bakers out there are shuddering... but I never liked rules anyway! To do that, I just added an extra 1/2 c of powdered sugar to my recipe.
3
Fill up your piping bag and carefully ice each cookie. Then, use a knife to spread it out a bit and make it look more frosting-y. (Yep, that's a word.)
4
Done! Now, to decorate! Royal icing sets super fast so I recommend decorating as you go, every few cookies.
5
I did two different decorations. For one, I made my own smaller piping bag by cutting off the tip of a plastic sandwich bag. Then I piped back and forth across the "donut", just like you'd see on a real one! For the others, I just added some fun holiday sprinkles.
6
Tada!!!! You can repeat all the same steps, at a smaller scale, for the cute mini donuts. Then package them up, bring 'em to your cookie exchange and get ready to impress!
