Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: The perfect balance of sweetness and spice.
Texture: Thin and crispy, these cookies break in half cleanly and have a satisfying crunch.
Ease: Super simple 30-minute recipe. No chilling required.
Pros: The perfect easy, festive addition to any Christmas cookie box.
Cons: None.
Would I make this again? I make these cookies every holiday season!
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These Crispy Gingersnaps Cookies are the perfect classic, crispy gingersnap cookie.
Typically, I prefer a chewy cookie, but every once in a while, I crave that satisfying crunch and crispness of something sweet.
So, I tweaked my Chewy Gingersnap recipe (which is included in my cookbook – available on Amazon!) to make them thin and oh-so-satisfyingly crunchy.
What Makes Cookies Chewy, Crisp, or Cakey?
My free guide reveals the ingredients and tweaks that matter.
These cookies are perfectly spice-forward, with that beautiful snap. Plus, they look so pretty next to beautifully iced Cut-Out Sugar Cookies and Christmas Brownies on your Christmas dessert table!
These cookies have become one of my most popular cookie recipes ever, with hundreds of wonderful reviews like this comment from reader El below:
Reader Love
My husband loved these cookies. He is a grumpy old man and doesn’t praise much of anything, so when he said, “These are the best cookies I have ever tasted!” I figured that was a super rubber stamp of approval. Great cookie!
–
Enjoy on a cozy day with a glass of milk or a cup of coffee or tea.
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make Thin & Crispy Gingersnaps
What are Gingersnaps?
Gingersnaps are just what they sound like: a cookie flavored with ginger, plus other spices that we’ll talk more about below. They are typically crunchy or have a brittle texture, thus the “snap”. The spiciness of the ginger and richness of the molasses pair perfectly with coffee, tea, hot cocoa, or mulled wine.
A year-round favorite all over the world, Gingersnaps are particularly popular to welcome in the fall and winter holiday seasons. Perfectly spiced, these cookies have the most beautiful cracked, sugary tops. I love these cookies in the fall, when the temperatures are slowly beginning to drop. They’re delicious with a glass of cold milk or even lemonade – and even better when used in place of graham crackers for over-the-top Gingersnap S’mores or to make ice cream sandwiches!
What Makes Cookies Crispy and Crackled?
- A heavy amount of baking soda interacts with the molasses in this recipe to encourage spread.
- This allows cracks in the dough to develop where moisture escapes, creating that beautiful crackled appearance and crunchy texture.
- Ensure your baking soda is fresh and active – learn how to test leavening agents for freshness here.
- There’s also much more granulated sugar than brown sugar in this recipe. White sugar encourages more spread and has less moisture to make for a crisper cookie.
- Lastly, a longer baking time ensures a crunchy texture all the way through the center of these cookies.
Why Roll the Dough in Sugar?
Rolling the cookie dough balls in sugar contributes to the overall texture of the cookies as well as the cracky tops. It helps to draw moisture out from the surface of the cookies while they bake, though the majority of the “crackliness” comes from the baking soda and molasses.
Feel free to skip this step if preferred, but your cookies won’t be quite as crisp and won’t look as pretty.
Measure Your Flour Correctly to Ensure Gingersnaps are Crispy!
- To avoid ending up with Gingersnaps that are thick, hard, or dense instead of perfectly crispy, make sure to measure your flour accurately with a digital kitchen scale.
- It’s so easy to accidentally add too much flour if you’re measuring by using cups.
- If you don’t have a scale, use the spoon and level method to measure.
- Just take a look at what a difference too much flour can make:
How to Make Flavorful Gingersnaps
- Make sure your spices, especially the ground ginger, are fresh and of high quality.
- If your spices no longer smell very aromatic, toss them and purchase new spices.
- The fresher the spice, the more flavorful it’ll be.
- While I haven’t tried it, you can also experiment with crystallized ginger, but expect your cookies to be a little more sugary.
- If you want more spice in your gingersnaps, add a tablespoon or two of freshly grated ginger.
- You can also add a pinch of cayenne pepper or a little black pepper.
- In addition to the spices, the molasses used is also important. More on this just below.
The Molasses
Make sure to use unsulphured molasses. Never use blackstrap molasses in baking, it’s extremely bitter. Brer Rabbit or Grandma’s in their ‘mild’ or ‘original’ flavors tend to work best.
Can I Make these Cookies Smaller?
Sure! Use a small 1 tablespoon-sized cookie scoop for small Gingersnap Cookies and reduce the bake time by a couple minutes.
Can I Double This Recipe?
Yes! Simply double all ingredients to yield about 56 medium-sized cookies. No other modifications needed.
Can I Use This Recipe to Make Gingerbread Men?
No – this recipe was written to be a simple drop-style cookie, so it won’t hold its shape well when rolled out and shaped using cookie cutters. Instead, try my Gingerbread Cookies Recipe!
How to Store Homemade Gingersnaps
Store baked, cooled Gingersnaps in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 7 days.
How to Freeze Gingersnap Cookies
Store baked, cooled Gingersnap Cookies in the freezer inside an airtight container for up to 1 month.
Alternatively, portion out the balls of cookie dough, roll in sugar, place them on a baking sheet, and freeze for 1 hour or until solid. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the freezer for up to 2 months. Bake cookies from frozen, reducing the temperature to 325°F and adding a couple minutes to the baking time. Learn more about freezing cookie dough here.
More Christmas Cookie Recipes:
Crispy Gingersnaps
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Ingredients
- 1 1/2 sticks (170 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups (250 grams) granulated sugar, divided
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) lightly packed light brown sugar
- 1/3 cup (113 grams) unsulphured molasses (NOT blackstrap)*
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoons baking soda**
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 1/4 cups (286 grams) all-purpose flour,
measured correctly
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, use an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment to beat the butter, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the molasses and egg and beat until combined. Add in the salt, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and flour, and beat until combined.
- Place the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a shallow dish. Scoop the dough into 1 1/2 tablespoon balls and roll in the sugar before placing on the baking sheet, leaving plenty of room for spread. Bake for 15 minutes or until the cookies are spread and the surface looks crackled.
- Let cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 7 days.
Recipe Notes
The Ultimate Cookie Handbook
Learn the sweet SCIENCE of cookie baking in a fun, visual way to customize your own recipes frustration-free. Plus, my best 50+ homemade cookies!
This post was originally published in 2020 and has been updated with additional baking tips. Photos by Ashley McLaughlin.
How much is 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter in cups please?
Hi Barbara! 1 stick = half a cup, so 1.5 sticks = 3/4 cup 🙂 We highly recommend weighing your ingredients, however; it makes for much more consistent bakes, and easier clean-up! Read more about why here! Happy baking!
I’m not sure where I went wrong, but I ended up with a cookie sheet covered in one giant piece of what resembles overcooked caramel maybe♀️ everything melted together and was bubbling and wafer thin.. I even froze the second batch of cookies after rolling in Sugar, before baking and the end result was the same. not blaming the recipe, just trying to sort out where I messed up, because the flavor is perfect and I’d like to try and make them again.
Hi Kayce! I’m sorry to hear that these cookies didn’t turn out as they should! It sounds like something definitely went wrong in the process here. Was an ingredient perhaps accidentally missed? If not, here are a few things that may help us pinpoint what happened:
– How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure flour/sugar/etc and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe. Tessa talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time, in this article here!
– How old is your leavening agent? If your baking/soda powder are not fresh, they won’t do their jobs and your baked goods can not rise properly, fall completely flat, and much more. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here!
– How warm was your butter when you creamed your butter and sugars? If your butter is too warm when creaming, it can’t create the tiny air bubbles it needs to form, in order to help your cookies rise and stay thick. About 67°F is ideal when creaming. Have a look at this article, where Tessa discusses this, and the repercussions on the resulting baked goods!
I hope something here proves helpful, Kayce! If not, please feel free to reach back out to us and we can continue to troubleshoot together! 🙂
I’ve been searching for a recipe to make like this as its my moms favorite cookie and i’d love to surprise her for christmas with a box of cookies. That said, I don’t have a stand mixer….would a regular hand mixer work for this? With all the reviews id really love to try this!
Hi Courtney! Yes, that will work just fine 🙂
These turned out great! Spicy, and sweet with the raw sugar I put on top,and nicely crackled. I had no trouble rolling them in balls and made 24 cookies about 2.5 inches in diameter. I will make these again!
So glad to hear that you enjoyed these cookies so much, Susan!
It’s really simple and tasty. Thanks for the recipe!
Excellent!! I added double the ginger bec ause I like it hot!! Rolled them in sugar then flattened them with a glass and sprinkled flaked sea salt. 15 minutes exactly-crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle, absolute perfection!! thank you so much for sharing this recipe!!
Yay! So happy to hear that, Amy!
The cookies taste great, but mine certainly are not crispy through and through. The centers are soft like a molasses cookie. The edges set up nicely, so maybe a little more time in the oven would help? I don’t know if that would make the edges TOO crispy.
Overall, the cookies taste great, but I will try another ginger snap recipe before I retry these again.
Hi Georgia! Sorry, I just realized that your previous comment and this comment were both made by you! It sounds like another couple of minutes may have helped your cookies crisp up to the desired texture! The dough shouldn’t be the consistency you described in the last message, so I think something went awry in the making of the dough! I’m glad you enjoyed the flavor! Have a great day 🙂
omg these are perfect. I’ve never been able to make them the perfect consistency of chewy on the inside and crisp on the outside. they are gorgeous I also added a pinch of black pepper that gave it thag extra bite. Thank you!!!!
How do you scoop these?? The dough is not firm at all. I used a 1T scoop and a butter knife to plop a deconstructed blob of dough into a bowl of sugar, and at that point, I could round them into the ball shape. Should the dough be more firm? I am not new to making cookies, but I am new to ginger snaps.
Hi Georgia! Hmm, it definitely sounds like something went wrong here! How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure flour/sugar/etc and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe. Tessa talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time, in this article here! Another thing could be the temperature of your butter (we recommend around 67°F for room temperature). I hope you give these another try sometime – they’re really delicious!! Happy baking 🙂
These turned out perfectly! I like my ginger baked goods extra spicy, so I did use a full 2 tsps ginger. Even though this dough doesn’t require chilling I had to refrigerate it overnight due to time constraints. I left it out for about 15 minutes while the oven heated up.
For the molasses I did use blackstrap but cut with an equal portion of honey to lighten it. I filled my 1/3 cup half full of blackstrap and topped the other half with honey.
So glad to hear you enjoyed these cookies!
This was a super awesome Ginger snaps cookie.I spiced it up by using fresh ginger & every bite was full of flavor . very good combination to have it with a pot of Ceylon Black Tea on a misty rainy day it’s so relaxing.Thank You HTH for this recipe.
I’ve made both the Chewy and the Crispy cookies and BOTH were outstanding. Definitely recipes that I will have in my rotation. I love knowing the reasoning behind the differences in the recipes and how that results in different cookies.
Beautiful ginger flavour and excellent texture. Worth making for sure!
Perfect fall/winter cookie to pair with coffee!