Recipe: Krampus Gingerbread Cookies
Last year a wonderful little horror comedy came out to celebrate the Christmas season. Krampus is the story of a dysfunctional family that comes together when it's terrorized by a deadly horned Santa-like demon and his horrifying sidekicks. You know, good old holiday fun!
If you've been reading this blog, you may know that Gremlins is one of my favorite Christmas movies (see my Gizmo cake from last year here), so I'm already a fan of the holiday horror comedy mashup. And Krampus plays in much the same way, with some truly scary moments and some riotous mischief throughout. Along with some stellar monster design (there's a Jack in the Box that will HAUNT YOUR DREAMS), it's definitely earned a spot in my annual Festive Movie rewatch.
I work at a horror prop house, so when we had our annual Krampus gift exchange, it seemed like the perfect time to make some Krampus-inspired cookies. Obviously, I had to make the evil gingerbread men from the movie. These guys have a very big head, and I couldn't find a matching gingerbread man cookie cutter for the life of me, so I ended up using this snowman head cutter and altering it a bit. When I was rolling out the dough, I realized I could use the same cutter to make some Krampus-shaped cookies, so we've got those, too.
This recipe is gluten-free. If you're looking for a gluten-full gingerbread recipe, you can use the one from my Wookiee Cookies post.
Gluten-Free Krampus Gingerbread Cookies
3 cups Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour
3/4 cup Brown Sugar packed
1 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Ground Ginger
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Salt
3/4 cup Butter, softened slightly
3/4 cup Unsulphured Molasses
2 Tbsp Milk
Royal Icing
4 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp Meringue Powder
6 Tbsp Water
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
In the bowl of a stand mixer or food processor, mix together all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and pulse or mix until the mixture resembles coarse sand.
Add the molasses and milk and pulse or mix until a dough forms. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 325F. Roll dough to 1/4" thickness and cut into gingerbread man or krampus shapes. You can see how I altered the snowman shape in the below pictures.
I used the pieces removed from the head or the snowman to make the gingerbread men's evil eyelids, and cut the krampus tongue from the piece removed from the snowman's hat. Brush the shapes with a little water to get the pieces to stick.
Transfer you dough shapes to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and chill for 5-10 minutes. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Let cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes before tranferring to a cooling rack.
For royal icing, beat all ingredient together for 7-10 minutes, until stiff peaks form.
Use royal icing to decorate - for the texture in krampus' beard, I just used the tip of my decorating bag to pull peaks out of the royal icing before it dried.
Merry Christmas!