Annoying Dog Gingerbread Cookies

You inventory (stomach) does not contain nearly enough ANNOYING DOG.**

Fix it.

Annoying Dog Gingerbread Cookies

Ingredients
Cookies
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1/3 cup + 2 Tbsp molasses
1 large egg

2 2/3 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground allspice

2 Tbsp flour (for rolling)
1 tsp cinnamon (also for rolling)

Frosting
Just use this recipe; 1/4 portion should be good enough.



Instructions

- In a medium mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
- Add molasses and mix until that's all pretty and smooth.
- Add the egg and beat it in until everything's all even.

- In a small mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.

- Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until you've got a ball of dough.

- Flatten the dough into a disc 1-2" thick and wrap it up in cellophane wrap.

- Refrigerate at LEAST 1 hour. I chilled mine for two or three days and it was the easiest-to-work-with cookie dough of my entire life, glory be.

When you're ready to make the cookies:

- Mix together the flour and cinnamon in a small dish. You'll uses this to flour the rolling surface and rolling pin. Does the cinnamon matter? I think it does, and this is my blog, so.

- Preheat your oven to 350*F. I cut out the first dozen cookies before I preheat, because I'm an energy conserving hippy like that.

- Flour your rolling surface and roll your dough out 1/6" thick (I have a rolling pin that measures this for me, highly recommended), flouring your rolling pin as needed.

- Cut the dough into shapes. I cut mine into ANNOYING DOGS and FLOWEY because I'm just too cool for you to handle. You can make them into whatever shape you want.

- Bake on a silpat or parchment paper for 8 to 10 minutes. If you overbake them, you'll get gingersnaps, but baking them only 8 minutes will leave 'em chewy and soft.

At some point, make the frosting. To do that, you will:

- Combine butter and cream cheese in a small mixing bowl and beat on low with an electric mixer until smooth.

- Add the almond extract.

- Introduce the powdered sugar. Now there's some debate about how best to do this: I'm a fan of mixing it in with a spatula until it's NOT a powderkeg of dry sugar waiting to explode, and then mixing it with the electric mixer, but if you want to play Russian roulette and forego the spatula, then have fun mopping sugar off every surface in your kitchen, I guess.

- Mix on medium until fluffy and lighter in color.

- Pipe-ice the cookies. I don't do a pretty job of it, but you can if you want (or can, really, I don't think that's one of my skills tbh).

- Do your very best to not eat ALL THE COOKIES at once. This is also a skill I do not possess. I really don't mind.

**The title is a reference to the game Undertale. At one point in the game, you go through some steps to obtain a RED RUNE. When you reach the rune, you get an error that "Your inventory contains too much ANNOYING DOG." When you try to shuck the dog out of your inventory, it complies, but it steals the rune and runs away. My partner was so annoyed by this that he tried multiple times to get the rune before the dog did, only to sink into full sulk when I looked it up and discovered that it is, in fact, impossible to get the rune. As a joke, I bought a dog-shaped cookie cutter and made him a bunch of ANNOYING DOG cookies and one singular raspberry thumbprint cookie (to stand in as the RED RUNE). Turns out, ANNOYING DOG cookies are like crack to him, so now they're a staple in our household.

Now aren't you sorry you asked.

(Also, please don't google search for "Undertale Red Rune" unless you've done the Genocide playthrough. Spoilers abound just in the search results! Also if you haven't played Undertale, you should. It's one of the most awesome RPGs -- if not the most awesome RPG -- of all time.)