These easy, homemade gingersnap cookies are thin and crispy, and rolled in sparkly coarse sugar for the perfect crunchy ginger snap cookie recipe. These ginger snaps are a great make ahead cookie - either bake them ahead, or store the frozen cookie dough in the freezer for later!

Hi hi!
Just popping in to share the recipe for these homemade gingersnap cookies! These cookies are an addition to my collection of holiday cookie recipes that I am working on, and something that I have been meaning to work on for a while.
This ginger snap cookie recipe is a twist on my soft and chewy ginger molasses cookies - I tweaked the recipe to make it a little thinner, and baked them longer to give the perfect thin gingersnap cookie that is crunchy around the edges and slightly chewy in the middle. You could also call them a molasses crinkle cookie, or if you're familiar with gingernut biscuits, these are my perfect version of that! They make a great Christmas cookie, but to be honest, I make these year round.
Gingersnap Cookie Ingredients
These homemade gingersnap cookies are super easy, have a quick prep time, and are a no chill ginger snap cookie recipe, meaning that you can have them in the oven super quickly, and baked in about 16-17 minutes!
- Butter. I use unsalted, make sure that it is at nice room temperature.
- Granulated sugar. Either Caster sugar or regular granulated sugar works - this is the beauty of baking by weight, 200g of sugar is 200g sugar!
- Brown sugar. Either light brown sugar or dark brown sugar works here.
- Egg. Just one to bind - I haven't tried subbing it sorry!
- Molasses. Molasses adds to the depth of flavour in the ginger snap cookie. If you can't get your hands on molasses, you can use treacle or golden syrup, but it is worth getting some molasses if you can! I use unsulphured molasses, but I have tested this with blackstrap molasses and it works great.
- Vanilla. I use vanilla bean paste, but extract works great.
- All-purpose flour. Also called plain flour - nothing fancy here.
- Spices. These are a pretty spicy gingersnap cookie recipe - I use ground ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom in my recipe. The cardamom really gives the ginger snaps something special. You can use extra cinnamon if you don't have it, but I love what is does here.
- Baking soda. I use baking soda in this recipe to give the cookie spread, and baking soda also reacts with molasses.
- Salt. Skip it if you are using salted butter, but properly salting your baking, especially your sweet baking, makes such a difference! You won't necessarily notice the salt, but it rounds things out so nicely.
How to make Thin and Crispy Cookies
I often get a lot of questions about how I tweak a recipe - now that I have been running my food blog for a number of years, I often turn to my own recipes as a jumping off point when working on a new recipe.
For this ginger snap recipe, I used my ginger molasses cookies as a starting point. I love the recipe, but wanted something slightly thinner and crunchier, so here are the changes that I made, which are often changes I make in other cookie recipes too to manipulate them how I like.
- Changed the ratio of brown sugar to white sugar. My ginger molasses cookies have a higher ratio of brown sugar to white, which makes them thicker and spread less. I switched up the ratios for these ginger snap cookies, meaning the cookies spread more, and have a perfect chewy texture which gets crunchy around the edges.
- Drop the flour content sightly. This increases the ratio of butter to flour, meaning the cookie spreads a little more in the oven.
- Increase the molasses. I tweaked it by just a little, but this help with spread.
- Increase baking soda. I use baking soda rather than baking powder in the cookies, and increased the quantity slightly to ensure there was enough to give the cookies a little rise and not be cancelled out by the molasses. My general rule is baking soda helps with spread, and baking powder helps with puff.
- Bake for longer. This is a pretty simple one, but to get that lovely crunchy gingersnap cookie, I increased the bake time slightly. If you want them even more crunchy, bake them for a little longer!
Can Ginger Snap Cookies be made ahead of time?
These gingersnap cookies are great to make ahead of time, as they are a super robust cookie and keep super well in a container. Alternatively you can make the dough ahead of time and store the cookie dough balls in the freezer until you are ready to bake, or bake some off and then freeze the rest of the dough.
How do you store Ginger Snap Cookies?
Store gingersnap cookies in an airtight container at room temperature. They will keep for up to a week stored correctly.
I haven't tried freezing the baked cookie - I would freeze the dough as fresh baked is always so much nicer!
How to freeze cookie dough
This gingersnap cookie recipe is great to make ahead - the dough stores super well frozen, so you can pull it out and bake whenever you need.
It is important to not coat the balls of dough in the sugar before you freeze them, otherwise the sugar will get all weird and weepy when you bring them out to re bake.
To freeze the dough, scoop it out, roll into balls, then flash freeze the dough and store in the freezer in an airtight container or bag for up to three months.
For more tips and tricks on freezing dough and baking from frozen, check out my post: How to freeze cookie dough
How to bake Gingersnaps from Frozen
I tested this out with some of the gingersnap cookie dough that I had frozen, and found that the best way to bake the frozen dough and get the most similar outcome is to bake it at a lower temperature - 325°f / 160°c (I cover this more on other cookies in my post on how to freeze cookie dough). This gives the frozen dough more time to spread.
When you are ready to bake from frozen, remove the dough from the freezer and leave it to stand at room temperature to soften very slightly while the oven preheats. This makes the surface of the cookie dough ball slightly sticky, and means the sugar will stick to the outside.
Roll the cookies in sugar and bake for 17-18 minutes or until the cookies are your desired level of doneness.
Frequently Asked Questions
What tools and equipment do you use?
You can find a full list of the tools and equipment I use on my products page
Can Ginger Snaps be made Gluten Free?
I haven't tried it sorry, so I'm not sure!
Can this recipe be made without a stand mixer?
Yes, if you don't have a stand mixer you can use an electric hand mixer, or make by hand if you have a lot of elbow grease!
Can I roll the gingersnap cookies in something else?
Yes - do whatever you like here! You could roll the cookies in ginger sugar like I did in my ginger molasses cookie recipe, or roll them in a cinnamon sugar mixture.
For more holiday cookie recipes, check out:
❤️ Made this recipe and love it? ❤️
I would LOVE for you to leave me a review and star rating below to let me know how you liked it! Also, please make sure to tag me on Instagram!
Answers to your baking questions
Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:
- baking in grams
- adjusting oven temperatures
- what kind of salt to use
- and many more!
I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!
30 Minute Thin and Crispy Gingersnap Cookies
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 22 cookies 1x
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These easy, homemade gingersnap cookies are thin and crispy, and rolled in sparkly coarse sugar for the perfect crunchy ginger snap cookie recipe. These ginger snaps are a great make ahead cookie - either bake them ahead, or store the frozen cookie dough in the freezer for later!
Ingredients
- 225g butter, at room temperature
- 100g light or dark brown sugar
- 200g granulated sugar
- 40g unsulphured molasses (blackstrap works too)
- 1 large egg (50g without the shell), at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 290g all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp (6g) baking soda
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 4 tsp (8g) ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- Turbinado / demerara / raw sugar for rolling
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°f / 180°c. Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper (you may have to bake these in several batches depending on how many trays your oven can tolerate).
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and molasses together on high speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix to combine. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a small bowl. Add to the mixer and mix on low until just combined.
- Using a 2 tbsp spring loaded cookie scoop, scoop balls of dough (approx 45g each), and place them onto a prepared baking sheet. I like to do 6 on each sheet then increase to 8 when I know how much space they will take up. Roll each ball of dough between your hands to form a ball, then roll in the turbinado sugar before placing on the baking sheet. Leave any mixture that you are not baking off just yet in the bowl and scoop just before baking.
- Bake the cookies for 16-17 minutes or until puffy and set around the edges. Remove from the oven, and if you like, scoot the cookies into a rounder shape using a cookie cutter slightly larger than the cookie. Cool on the pan for 5 minutes - the cookies will deflate slightly as they cool. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely. Repeat the baking process with the remaining cookie dough.
- Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.
Notes
If you want your ginger snap cookies to be more crunchy, increase the bake time by 1-2 minutes.
Keywords: Gingersnaps, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Cookies
Comments
the best!!!!
★★★★★
Really amazing biccies. Remind me of the ginger biscuits of my childhood. Recipe worked really well even though I’m not a good biscuit baker. Really delicious, I like small, crunchy biscuits so I made them smaller.
★★★★★
Can't wait to make these!!
★★★★★
Is molasses in the recipe the blackstrap molasses I can buy in a NZ supermarket or the American one that is more like treacle? I wouldn't want to waste the ingredients, having made that mistake before and not used the right type. Thank you for clarification.
Hi! Blackstrap should work fine here because it's such a small quantity! I used one I got from Moore Wilson's which is an Aussie brand and pretty sure it's blackstrap!
Dear Erin, love that you use Grams as Im in Sweden.
I bake a LOT. It reminds me of our gingerbread cookies.
I just made them, perfect taste! I just felt its to much sugar for me, I feel you have a LOT of sugar in your bakings in America hmm
I changed your recipe but they got great crunchy. I took 200 g sugar instead of 300 g (100 g Dark muscovado sugar and 100 g white sugar )
I took 190 g butter and 230 g flour.
It worked perfect for me!
I also make them smaller than you do my batch got me 50 cookies.
Thank you for your inspiration
Light Energies
Lena
★★★
These are delicious! Crispy and chewy. They were super quick to make and even though I thought the balls may have been too soft, they turned out beautifully.
★★★★★
These are insane!!! I love spicy cookies and these are my new favorite, thank you Erin!
★★★★★
My favorite ingredient is the egg, out of the shell! LOL!! I love baking with a sense of humor.
I will make these today using part cannabutter, and will add some finally chopped candied ginger.
★★★★★
Haha that's so people don't weigh the egg in the shell! I hope you enjoy!
Sooo yum! I used fan bake on 180° by accident and they were so perfectly crispy! Obviously my oven knew the texture I wanted.
Also, I added mixed spice instead of cinnamon (also by accident, what is wrong with me - ahhh yes ADHD) and then realised and added cinnamon and holy heck was so yum. Thanks Erin!
★★★★★
Taste great, used golden syrup as didn’t have molasses.
★★★★★
Just made these are they are so so yummy and pretty! Super easy and quick and come out just like the pictures!
★★★★★
These are so, so good. I love ginger but was a little hesitant when I saw that amount in the recipe. However, it's a perfect balance with the other spices and sugar. Happy Holidays!
★★★★★
Look no further. This is the only ginger molasses recipe you need. Comes out perfect every single time. I love the fact you don’t need to chill… because I need instant gratification cookies!
★★★★★
I love soft chewy cookies but hubby likes crunchy cookies so when I saw this I knew I had to try it. I did make them a wee bit smaller at 25gr each and baked them for 14 minutes. Perfect cookies. They are crunchy and have a great ginger snap flavor. I have made several of your recipes and they are all easy to follow and delicious!
Thank you for sharing!
★★★★★
Thank you for this recipe, Erin. I'm going to make them tomorrow!
★★★★★
The texture of these are perfect. I did for 17mins in a fan forced oven at 170 and they are perfectly crisp but still have a tiny bit of give in the centre. I want to add some diced glace ginger next time for more ginger oomph - am worried it will soften them but even it if does they will still be an amazing biscuit. These are exactly the sort of biccie I want in the tin for morning tea.
★★★★★
These were a perfect round out to my Christmas baking. Pairs nicely with afternoon tea, egg nog ice cream or a little after dinner sweet.
Hi Erin,
Hope you are feeling well.
I have some brown butter buttercream to use up. Do you think these cookies would work as a sandwich cookie or should I use a softer cookie?
Thank you
Hi! No they would be super delicious as a sandwich cookie! Maybe a little hard to eat but you could also just frost the tops?
These cookies are perfect! I made them a bit smaller and sandwiched them with brown butter cream cheese icing and they’re a huge hit! Spice level is awesome.
Thanks for a great recipe!
★★★★★
The most perfect gingersnaps! The recipe is so easy and came out perfectly the first time. I don’t normally bake by weight but I will from now on…I think it made all the difference.
★★★★★
Loved these cookies! Super easy to make. Made them for my Christmas cookie boxes and all my friends and family loved them. One of my new favorite cookies to make and eat
★★★★★
Absolutely amazing, my first time making these and they were a hit. Super easy and absolutely delicious. They came out exactly like on the picture!
My new fav ginger cookie recipe! Very quick and simple to make, and came out perfectly. Took them out at 15 mins to keep them a little chewy. Would be perfect paired with vanilla ice cream to make a sandwich.
★★★★★
These are amazing!! Will absolutely be making again. May have smashed back one too many when soft and warm out of the oven but they're just as good when cooled and crispy. Giving me crunchy dunkable gingernut vibes which I haven't found in a recipe before!
Very tasty! The kick of cardamom works so well with these.
★★★★★
Added a bit of cloves to up the gingerbread vibes, texture is spot on for me!
★★★★★
Hi. I just made this ginger snap cookies.veryflavorful and delicious. However, mine cookies have very little crinkles/cracks like yours. I bake in a 350 degrees for 14 mins since I did only 25 gm each. Can u tell me why please. I like it softer and not too crunchy so I baked less minutes. Hope for your respond. Thanks chloe
Hi! I would say it is from having a smaller cookie - there is less cookie to spread out and crackle!
Yummy! These are a perfect combo of spice. They remind me of a chewier version of the store bought molasses cookies!
★★★★★
I made these cookies multiple times over the holiday and these were so good. The flavor was outstanding but the crunchy and chewy texture was even better. Everyone loved these and this recipe has been added to my Favorite Cookies list! Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful recipe!
★★★★★
I made a double batch of these as wee Christmas gifts and they turned out so well and were delicious! Super easy to make too.
Also just wondering where you purchased your cookie scooper from? Can you get it in NZ? I wasn’t able to find one that size. Thanks!
★★★★★
I’ve made these twice now; the first time exactly as per the recipe and the second time I made the size of my cookies exactly half (weighed each ball out to 21g) and halved the baking time. Both turned out perfectly… crispy edges, chewy centres, perfect spice level. This will be a go-to recipe for sure. Thanks for perfecting it for us!
★★★★★
I bought mine from Farmers.
Great texture and the flavour is so good! I’m going to get cardamom as I need to try these again!
★★★★★
These are a favorite in our household. Excellent crunch on the outside with a slight chew in the center that is just *chefs kisses* and spices are on point and perfectly balanced.
Recipe is easy to follow and does indeed come together in 15 minutes. They freeze well (these are a must-have in the cookie freezer stash) and bake up from frozen perfectly using the guide.
★★★★★
Absolutely love this recipe! So easy, so yummy and they look beautiful! I ended up cooking them to be chewy which I really liked but I might try cooking the next batch for an extra minute to try a crispy version. Highly recommend making this if you're looking for a perfect gingersnap recipe. It's magical!
★★★★★
Holy fuck, these are delicious!
★★★★★
These cookies were perfect! They came out exactly right the first time and they were an absolute hit!!!
So, so good. Had to use half coconut oil and chose to use about half white whole wheat flour. I’ll make these again. Thanks, Erin!
★★★★★
Absolutely delightful! Like a luxury version of gingernut biscuits. The spices come through super well too!
★★★★★
Crunchy, gingery, yummy! Was a hit with family and coworkers!
★★★★★
Hi Erin, I have been looking for a while for a biscuit just like these. I was worried they would not spread from a ball into a flat crispy biscuit but I followed the recipe and voila, the BEST ginger biscuit ever. Thank you so much. By the way, love it that your measurements are in grams.
Lin
★★★★★
Come on! Wanted to try recipe, but see it's in gram form. Why???
Patsy, this may come as a surprise to you, but the world does not revolve around you and your needs. The recipe is in grams because that is how I write my recipes. Please go and be an entitled grumpus elsewhere, I had a quick check for you and it seems there are 4,500 gingersnap recipes on google, maybe a different free recipe would suit you better and you could make that instead of complaining about mine not being in a format that suits you specifically.
Excellent cookies. I would not say her question was a complaint nor she is entitled. You did answer her question so that's good.
Patsy! It's incredible I know... but I found some $10 scales on Amazon for you that you can use to bake properly, like the rest of the planet!
https://www.amazon.com/Ultrean-Precision-Measures-Stainless-Batteries/dp/B08CZDYNF7/ref=sr_1_6?crid=EL47PMD273WD&keywords=kitchen+scales&qid=1693358450&sprefix=kitchen+%2Caps%2C745&sr=8-6
I ran out of cardamom so I used my remaining 1/4 tsp with 3/4 tsp of cloves and they still turned out delicious. I would also make the balls about 1 Tbsp in size as these spread a lot.
One of my favorite cookies ever!
★★★★★
These look amazing and I’m going to make them - salted or unsalted butter?
Either works! If you use salted just leave out a bit of the salt called for in the recipe
The spice mix is delicious and they are so crunchy. My partner isn’t a baker and they came out perfect. Will definitely be making these again.
★★★★★
These are the best! Perfectly super spicy (I normally double the spices of most recipes!). Had to make an emergency chia egg when I realised half way through cooking I had no actual eggs and they still turned out perfect! Best ginger cookies ever.
Erin, made these for my grandchildren. Had to make second batch! I think they are absolutely delicious. Thanks for recipe.
★★★★★
Love this recipe! I have made it twice and everyone raves about them. The cardamom takes them to another level. Excellent cookies!!
★★★★★
As promised, these cookies come together in no time flat. They’re perfect and delicious.
★★★★★
Hi, I was wondering can I grate in some fresh ginger ?
I don't see why not!
These are 10/10! So delicious, and simple to make - thank you
★★★★★
Absolutely delicious! I was on a roll and forgot to freeze the dough. The baked cookies froze well and, defrosted in a low temp oven for a couple of minutes came out perfect.
★★★★★
The bomb gingersnaps. I made these celiac friendly by changing the dry ingredients to 270g plain GF Flour, 20g rice flour and 1/4 tsp xantham. Chilled for 20 before baking. They're so good.
★★★★★
These are the perfect gingersnaps! Work out beautifully every single time. Even at high altitude. Dough freezes very well!
★★★★★