Gingerbread Men Cookies

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 egg
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2/3 cup dark molasses
• 6 tablespoons softened butter
• Raisins for decoration

Instructions:

Sift together all the dry ingredients (everything in the ingredient list up to the allspice), and mix them up. Then, in a separate bowl, beat together the wet ingredients (everything from the egg to the butter). Once the second mixture is beaten uniformly, add the dry ingredients little by little to the wet mix, stirring until well-blended. Cover the mixture and refrigerate it for one hour. Preheat the oven to 350º F. Sift some flour onto a board and the rolling pin to avoid having the dough stick, and roll out a portion of the dough onto the board, down to 1/4-inch thickness. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter shaped like a man to cut out cookies, and place them onto a buttered cookie sheet, one inch apart. (Or you can make the men yourself using just your hands, pressing the shape out how you like.) Decorate the cookies with raisins for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, if you desire. Bake them for 8 minutes, or until firm. Cool on a wire rack.

Note: If you'd rather not use raisins, you can always use frosting or another form of decoration to make these into gingerbread men, OR if you'd rather just have gingerbread (without making them "men"), you can just bake squares of it the same way.