Sure, Toronto may be getting hammered by one of the worst ice storms we’ve ever seen, but dammit, now’s not the time to completely give up! There are two days left until Christmas (plus or minus a few hours), and what better way to cheer yourself up than with some festive Christmas cookies?
But these aren’t run-of-the-mill gingerbread people: these are the slightly more X-rated version. Inspired by Penny Arcade‘s long-running contest, I put together a little guide to making your very own dickerdoodles (penis-shaped gingerbread cookies) as well as their counterpart, the vagingerbread cookie (same thing, but . . . vagina-shaped). The recipe is adapted, with liberal changes, from The Food Network. To start off, you’ll need:
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1/2 cup of room-temperature butter
- 1 egg (large or extra-large, they’re basically the same)
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
- 1/2 cup of molasses
- 2-1/2 cups of flour
- 1 tablespoon of ginger
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon of cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon of allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- Icing! But we’ll get to that later
Start off by beating together your sugar and your butter in a large bowl. If your butter isn’t nice and soft and room-temp, stick it in the microwave for a good 13 seconds. Is it cheating? Yes, but you have better things to do with your time than wait for butter to stop being hard. Anyway, once you’ve beaten your butter-sugar, add in your egg and your vanilla, and beat until incorporated. Then just pour in your molasses and mix it proper. (Spray some Pam in your cups so the molasses won’t stick. Molasses is super annoying.)
In a separate, adequately sized bowl to the side, mix your flour with your various spices. Gingerbread is a spice cookie, so feel free to experiment with the ratio of spices used, but generally speaking, ginger should be your primary taste. Once the dry stuff has been well mixed, slowly mix it into the wet stuff until you have a nice firm consistency. For lack of a better comparison, it should have the malleability of clay. When you’re happy with your dough, divide it in two, wrap it in Saran and chill it in the fridge for at least two hours.
When you’re ready to start baking, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Turn your dough out on a flat, smooth, clean, well-floured surface and beat it with a rolling pin. You don’t have to wallop it with a pin, but it is great for venting. Anyway, roll the dough out to a 4mm thickness. If you have genital-shaped cookie cutters, you can use them, but I find cutting them out with a bread knife works surprisingly well. Just gently work your knife through the dough, tracing the desired shapes: for boners, give ’em a head, a shaft, then a pair of balls underneath. For vaginas (or more accurately, labias), cut out tear-shapes. Transfer your cookies to a cookie sheet and bake for seven to eight minutes. You should have enough dough for around three dozen cookies, depending on size.
Once your cookies have cooled on a wire rack, now’s the time to ice them. Mix together some icing sugar with a VERY small amount of milk and vanilla until it’s a good thickness. You really don’t need that much milk: believe me, a little goes a long way. As long as it’s not liquid, you’re fine. Feel free to play around with food colouring in the icing and chocolate shavings for pubes (oh, the things you never think you’ll type). Serve at an appropriately adult holiday function. Merry Christmas!
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