Chocolate gingerbread men

Since the Christmas season is fast approaching, what better time than this to be baking some gingerbread army. I'm not a big fan of ginger flavour so I scoured the internet to find a chocolate recipe instead. Unfortunately the outcome wasn't as expected because my cookies cracked so my gingerbread men looked more like 'The Thing' instead lol!

My source for this recipe came from GotChocolate. Not highly recommended because for some reason the cookies don't taste as good as they look. I didn't quite like the cracks in my little men. But anyhow, here's the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sifted cocoa podwer
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup vegetable shortening (I kept adding more shortening because the dough was too dry, and even then it didn't really help)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
3/4 cup molasses
Red cherries chopped up
2 Tbsp icing sugar to make the white icing.

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 180C. Grease baking sheets with shortening and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, cocoa powder, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and baking powder until well mixed. Set aside.
3. In a separate large bowl, cream shortening and brown sugar until smooth fluffy. Beat in egg, then the molasses.
4. Add in prepared flour mixture into the wet mixture. Reduce mixer speed to LOW and beat till crumbly bits of dough forms.
5. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead just until it forms a smooth mass. I couldn't get this to work because my dough kept cracking because it was too dry. From then on, I kept on adding shortening but unfortunately didn't really help either.
6.Divide into thirds and roll one of the thirds to a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Flour the dough and a rolling pin only as needed. Use a gingerbread man cutter to cut out the shapes. Decorate with cut cherry pieces.
7. Bake for about 6-8 minutes until cookies feel dry but still are a little bit soft.
8. Remove from oven and cool completely.
9. Pipe the white icing to create the deco effects.

I was so sleepy at work today and since I didn't have any coffee fix to hyper me up, I turned a little morbid and took pictures of my gingerbread man while nibbling on him. Definitely made me feel much happier after! :p