I looked in the recipe section for a gingerbread cookie recipe, but it said "no results"? Is that possible? 
And since I am asking, anyone have a good recipe?
The old-fashioned recipe by Betty Crocker(?) it calls for 7 cups of flour and is the really common one and it tastes so dang good!
Here are a couple of other good ones:
http://christmas.allrecipes.com/az/GingerbreadMen.asp
http://cookie.allrecipes.com/az/ilnsSpicyGingrbrdMn.asp
Thank you cakediva, I will try looking up the Betty Crocker recipe!
No problem... I always wanted one that was specifically for making houses (non-edible) but didn't call for a bunch of really expensive ingredients.... my kids want to EACH do their own houses this year 4 kids....and of course, I want my own gingerbread cottage too! 
I make gingerbread every Christmas and my recipe is posted in here.. Here is it in case you can't find it.
My Favourite Gingerbread Dough
Serves/Yields: makes one gingerbread house or a few dozen cookies
Prep. Time:
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Category: Egg-Free Cakes, Christmas Cakes
Difficulty: Easy
My Favourite Gingerbread
One year I made 18 gingerbread houses with my daycare kids.
This is perfect to use for gingerbread houses or decorated cookies.
1 cup butter
1 cupsugar
1 cup molasses
4 1/2- 5 cups flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon each cimmamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt.
Melt butter, add sugar and molasses and stir until sugar disolves. Remove from heat and cool till lukewarm.. Place the 4 1/2 cups flour, spices, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. Pour in warm butter -molasses mixture. Blend well using a large spoon and then kneading with hands until dough forms a balls. If dough is too soft add remaining flour. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate then roll out and cut.
Bake @ 350 aprox 10-12 minutes depending on the size of your cookies.
If making a gingerbread house.. Trace your patterns onto the rolled gingerbread and cut out and bake till firm.. Immediately after pieces come out of oven place pattern on pieces and retrace with a sharp knife . All edges must be straight. . If dough gets too cold to trim set back in oven for a minute to soften till you have cut out all windows , doors etc. Store flat in a cool dry location till ready to assemble. {not fridge}
Assemble using royal icing as the glue. I usually make the pieces a few days before assembling them . After assembling wait a few days if you are getting the kids to decorate as this will ensure that they are strong enough for little hands to handle.
Source: my friend Sharon 25 yrs ago
Contributed by: crimsonhair on Friday, September 23. 2005 at 07:18:17
More Recipes of crimsonhair
I always use the recipe from Hans Rafert, White House Pastry Chef emeritus. He kindly gave the recipe for the white house gingerbread house to Mailbox News back in the 70s. Our family has made thousands--literally thousands--over the years. We used to do one for everyone in the girl scout troup, the boy scout troup, the classes, one for each of our teachers, etc. It added up, and we often made 100+ per year. We call it Operation Gingerbread. 
I'll dig up the recipe and instructions and post it here when I get home.
fthrem--I drew a template years ago, and just use the same one each year. The grease from the gingerbread dough has preserved the paper nicely. My dad made a nice one for my mom out of plexiglass with a knob handle--I'd love to have a set of those. It makes a difference when you're making a lot of gingerbread houses at once!
White House Gingerbread
Hans Rafert, White House Pastry Chef
Text by my mother
2 C granulated sugar
1 c plus 2 T brown sugar
1 c crisco solid shortening
4 eggs
3 T molasses
1 1/2 t salt
2 t soda
6 c flour
1 T ginger
1 T cinnamon
Mix the shortening and sugars in a heavy duty mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, ebating until fluffy. The better you cream the shortening and sugars, the smoother the final dough (and thus your house) will be. Add the molasses, salt, soda, ginger, and cinnamon. Mix completely. Add the flour, one cup at a time. The dough will become very stiff, and the bowl will be quite full. The older mechanical Kitchenaids made less of a mess than the newer solid state mixers. Be prepared with a towel to cover the mixer so flour doesn't fly everywhere. Once the flour is incorporated turn the mixer off. As I mentioned, it is a stiff dough and the object is to incorporate the flour, nothing more. (My note: here in the desert, where everything is DRY I find I need a little less flour, about 5-5.5 cups, instead of the full 6 cups I used back east.) Depending on the depth of the beater setting, the flour on the bottom of the bowl may not mix in. Use a spatula to work some of the flour into the dough, and give one final mix with the mixer.
Roll dough to a generous 1/8" thickness. Roll the dough directly on a lightly greased cookie sheet. To keep the cookie sheet from sliding around, spread a damp dishtowel on top of the counter, beneath the pan. trace around your house templates, and lift up the excess dough (you can re-roll and use it again).
Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Check cookies after 10 minutes at 375. I honestly have to adjust the time to every oven I use. 12-14 minutes baking time is not uncommon. Hans Rafert's suggested 10 minutes is probably based on a nice big Vulcan or Viking oven with incredibly even and precise heat delivery. I don't believe I have ever used 10 minutes in a home oven. Slightly over-baked (short of burning) is better than underbaked as you need rigidity for construction.
Let the cookie pieces cool completely (overnight) before assembly. When moving the pieces, they must be supported on a flat surface. If you stack them, don't stack very high, not so much for balancing reasons as pressure reasons. The pressure will cause warm cookies to "cement" into one another.
This ammount of dough makes 3 small houses or 1 large house. I mix all my batches of dough on one day and bake all my pieces on the next day. Both days are long, especially the baking day. In years when I do over 100 houses, it takes two weeks of mixing, baking, and assembling time.
Royal Icing:
6 egg whites
1 t cream of tartar
2lb confectioners' sugar
1/2 t clear artificial vanilla
Egg whites work better if they are warmed to about 96 degrees, but it's not critical. Pour egg whites into an impeccably clean (free of all traces of grease) mixing bowl. Add the sugar and cream of tartar and vanilla. Mix on medium speed for 10-15 minutes until it is stiff. You want a *very* stiff consistancy royal icing to use as the glue for the gingerbread house construction and decoration.
To prevent crusting over, keep covered with a wet cloth at all times. be sure all utensils used to mix and store royal icing are free from any traces of grease. Failure in this matter will mean that your icing will not set up and dry. I've had this happen just once in my 20 (My note: now 30) years and more than 2000 houses. Trust me. You don't want this to happen.
Notes on assembly and decoration:
Place royal icing in a decorator cone of parchment paper with a small to medium hole cut. Tips aren't necessary.
Cut cardboard or wooden bases and cover them with white freezer wrap, dull finish side out. Use the icing as cement to assemble the house. Start with teh base of the front and back pieces and cement them in place. Have a helper hold them in place, or use cans to prop them up. Next, while the helper is holding the front and back pieces upright, run a bead of icing down the left sides of the pieces being held. Run a bead on the bottom of a side piece. Place the side piece against the house where you have just placed icing. Repeat for teh right side. It's best to Let this part dry for a couple hours before attempting to add the roof pieces. It *can* be done all in one go, but it's tricky! And again, it's critical to have extremely thick icing. (my parents got around this by making A-frame houses. very cute and alpine, much faster to assemble!)
Dimensions for a small A-frame house: Isocoles triangle with .5" sides and 6" base. Roof top is rectangle with 9.25 and 6.25" sides. One triangle piece needs a door cut out. Bake the door seperately. Just after removing front house pieces from oven, trim the doors with a sharp knife. The dough will be soft enough that you can do this while it is hot. The doorways tend to close up a bit during baking. I usually bake up a bunch of extra door pieces out of some scrap pieces. After all, it's just a strip of dough cut into rectangles. Extras make great snackers for people drawn to the baking area by the fragarance of the gingerbread. Tell them they're great with a glass of milk. I can't remember the large triangle dimensions right now. I use almost all of the area of the big cookie sheet for the roof pieces. Actually, your cookie sheets will drive the size of the pieces. Make a mock up out of paper. when they fit correctly, understand that the dough expands during baking. Because of that, decrease the height of the triangle by about 1/2". That should about do it.
Then all that's left is the fun of decorating!
If you like a really spicy gingerbread cookie, the recipe on Martha Stewart's website for Basic Gingerbread Cookies is awesome. I've used it for years and it always gets raves.
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.fc77a0dbc44dd1611e3bf410b5900aa0/?vgnextoid=37d0e38e6ec0f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=gingerbread%20cookies&rsc=ns2006_m4
If you are using it to make houses, use a recipe with no baking soda or powder - which will make the dough rise and spread.
I always use the one from the Joy of Cooking; I think they're actually called Low-Fat Gingerbread People, but they are soft (big point there) and chewy, not crisp, and totally addictive!! I need to make some of those, now that I think of it. Thanks for reminding me.
My Grandmama had a wonderful Molasses Cookie that I posted here a while back. We call it her Famous Molasses cookie because she actually made these cookies for a Christmas function at the Gov. mansion that Mrs. Regan attended back when Ronald was Gov. of CA and Nancy had one, sought out my Grandmama at the function and asked her to write her recipe down on a cocktail napkin (my Grandmama had all of her recipes in her head...amazing woman). As far as we know, Nancy Regan still uses and serves only this recipe and she still gives credit to my Grandmama.
No problem... I always wanted one that was specifically for making houses (non-edible) but didn't call for a bunch of really expensive ingredients.... my kids want to EACH do their own houses this year
4 kids....and of course, I want my own gingerbread cottage too!
My kids make houses out of graham crackers... much easier that way.
THESE! From Oakie in Alaska...
Soft Gingerbread
1 (3.5 ounce) package cook and serve butterscotch pudding mix
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
In a medium bowl, cream together the dry butterscotch pudding mix, butter, and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the egg. Combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon; stir into the pudding mixture. Cover, and chill dough until firm, about 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease baking sheets. On a floured board, roll dough out to about 1/8 inch thickness, and cut into man shapes using a cookie cutter. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are golden at the edges. Cool on wire racks.
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%
