Gingerbread Bites

I haven't been able to do much baking lately much to my disapointment.
I was pretty happy to make some dough today. This is my first gingerbread dough and I'm pretty happy with it.
The idea for this came from Pinterest via this website. The premise for these are Gingerbread Cheesecake Bites. I don't think that title is quite right. It doesn't have the feel of cheesecake to me. It's for sure cream cheesy, just not cheesecake-like. I will play around a bit with the cheesecake part and try it again. So for now this is just Gingerbread Bites!

Here's what you'll need:

Gingerbread Bites

Gingerbread Dough

*Can be used for a gingerbread cookie, this dough will hold up nicely to those lovely cookie cutters you have!*

3 3/4 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup molasses

1 stick butter, softened

2 eggs

2 tsp ground ginger

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

Cheesecake Frosting

8 oz. cream cheese

4 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat to 350

Let's Bake!

  

Cream brown sugar and butter until combined.

It's important that the butter be softened. It will incorporate and look like this.

Add eggs and molasses. Mix well!

As I have said before I am sort of a molasses snob, so I should let you know that I used blackstrap molasses. Feel free to use the kind that you like!

Add your spices and then slowly add in flour. The dough will become stiff and pull away from the bowl. Put the dough in the fridge for at least 20 minutes that will help it stiffen up a little more.

Now roll the dough into teaspoon sized balls.

Make a well in your cookie dough. Pampered Chef makes a nifty little thing just for this purpose but I don't have one. I just used a small spoon!

For the filling

Combine powdered sugar, cream cheese and vanilla extract

I would suggest putting this in the fridge for a little while too. Otherwise you will (like I did) make a mess all over the kitchen.

Put the cream cheese mixture into a ziploc back and snip off a corner for a throw away pastry bag. Pipe mixture into each.

Bake for 10 minutes and let cool!

These are great little bites! The cookie is delicious and surprisingly moist for a gingerbread.

Make sure to let them cool or else they will make a mess!

These are great little Christmas cookies!