How To Dress Up Your Gingerbread Man

This year, we're showing you how to dapper-up your gingerbread man for the holiday. From icing and toppings to themes and design, we've come up with some of our favorite ways to decorate a gingerbread man. For the married couple, a gingerbread man would not be complete without his woman, and for the heat-seekers, cinnamon candies make a spicy and colorful way to button up his shirt. We cover these decorations and more for your gingerbread man so that when you finally catch him, he'll look and taste good.

As with every story, there's a beginning, and the gingerbread man's starts with his dough. Our gingerbread recipe relies on much more than ginger, calling for spices like nutmeg, ground cloves, and even a little black pepper to make sure that the cookies are extra flavorful.

For the Gingerbread Men recipe, click here.

A gingerbread man wouldn't be a gingerbread man without his globe-shaped head and bulky arms and legs. While unique and unconventional cutters exist, our gingerbread men show up for the party looking as traditional as possible.

The most traditional way of decorating a gingerbread man is with icing. We mixed confectioner's sugar with a little water and food coloring to design his getup for this one, and you'll see that icing was a common addition to many of his other outfits. 

These gingerbread men in tuxes are ready for any black-tie occasion. For chocolate lovers, we used mini chocolate chips to button up one man, while the other's suspenders are made of black licorice. 

For a healthy twist, we chose to make this gingerbread man's buttons out of raisins, providing a sweet burst of freshness alongside the smoky flavors of the gingerbread. 

It's date night, and we chose to decorate our gingerbread girl with a pretty red bow to match her dress. Our man is outfitted with mini M&M's, colorful green icing for a collar, and chocolate sprinkles for his hair. 

The greatest thing about decorating gingerbread men is that pretty much every round candy works. Here, we played around with a few varieties, like gum drops and cinnamon candies, to outfit our men, and got creative with the icing for their collars and cuffs. 

Use food coloring or natural food dyes to color royal icing for decorating your gingerbread men and women.

No matter what materials you choose, decorating gingerbread men can be as fun if not more fun than baking them. Always remember to give them a smile and make sure they have some female company along for the ride, too. 

For the Gingerbread Men recipe, click here.