Beating Shortening for Gingerbread Man Cookies

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Jennifer Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you how to make fun delicious gingerbread men. Our next step is going to be beating the shortening before we're adding the wet ingredients. So I'm going to use stick shortening. You can also measure out from a canister shortening but this is so much easier and neater, particularly if it doesn't open over the counter. Once again we're using one cup of shortening and just want to get that off. Now remember if you are measuring from a canister shortening you want to really pack it into the cup. One of the other benefits of using the stick you know it's measured out. We're going to turn on the mixer. Start out a little bit more slowly. For instance the shortening is nice and soft, much softer than butter it's not going to take much to get it beaten but it is really important to have that air incorporated in, make it softer before you can add any of the other ingredients. We're just going to kick that up all the way to whip and then the shortening is done. You can see what it looks like, all nicely beaten and pretty much splattered around the inside of the bowl. And we're going to add our next ingredients."