Gingerbread Cookies Cooked with Applesauce?

Last week was pretty slow in the culinary department, with Thomas working late, his dad sick, and his sister staying with her mom. With only really two and a half people to cook for, I wasn't really feeling the inspiration for cooking any full-on meals. Because of that though, I randomly got the urge to make gingerbread cookies. I didn't have molasses, so that originally set me back, but I was ready to hit the web hard and find a recipe without it.

 The problem I came up with then was, sure, there were tons of substitutions(corn syrup, butterscotch pudding, etc.) but I had none of them either! I ended up settling with the first one here, which called for something called golden syrup...which I replaced with regular Hungry Jack Maple Syrup (I figured they mainly just needed the gooey texture to keep them together.)

 The next issue that came up was that I had nowhere near enough butter to pull this thing off, so I again went searching for substitutions. What I found came as a shock (though it shouldn't be for you, because you know... the title); a healthy alternative for butter (in baking only I believe) is applesauce, which apparently makes them more moist to boot (which I'll never complain about).

Everything else went pretty much as planned, though I admittedly didn't really follow the order of how to mix the ingredients and I accidentally put baking powder in instead of baking soda (so I had to accomodate for  that when it happened). I did frost a few, but I realized late in the came that I wished I'd have nixed that idea altogether because it left them a bit too sweet for me. The cookies, on their own, have a nice subtle taste to them (that would be great with tea or coffee), so you're definitely free to ice them if you wish, but I wish I'd at least made my own icing instead of using the leftover frosting from the fridge (prepackaged Pillsbury stuff). I solved the problem pretty easily however, I just gave most of them to my husband to take with him to work (where they were apparently promptly devoured).

Just as a last little thing, this recipe makes like two and a half cookie sheets worth of goodies (much more than I expected), so just be wary of that.

Happy Nomming!