Great Gingerbread Men, Even Better Chewy Ginger cookies!!

I hunted down this recipe because Jayden really wanted to make gingerbread men.  Of course when the cutters were brought out, they wanted gingerbread elephants, dinosaurs, monkeys, airplanes, and trains more, but a good time was had by all.  We intended to share at least some of them...  But even though they were crunchy and not our usual cookie choice...we just kept seeking out that spicy orangey flavor and before we knew it they were gone!
They were so good crunchy I wondered how good they would taste if I left them thicker...  And I felt a little guilty eating the best ones leaving Jay to eat the more crunchy small ones when he got home from work.  (I didn't realize he would crave them like I did!) So I got up a little early the next morning.  With some of the leftover dough I used my cookie scoop and made a dozen ginger cookies to send with him to work.  I cooked them until JUST before they looked done and then left them on the pan for a few minutes... WOW.  We DEFINITELY didn't share that dozen.  In fact, after eating two right out ot the oven, I put the rest in Jay's lunch box to get them away from me!  Then I stole one more in the 5 minutes before he left!  I never thought I would replace my favorite soft ginger cookie recipe...until now!

So here goes!

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tablespoons orange zest
2 tablespoons molasses
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt

Just typical cookie directions... Cream butter and sugar then add other wet ingredients and mix well.  Then mix in the dry ingredients.  Refridgerate for at least several hours or overnight if you are making gingerbread men.  You don't have to refridgerate them to make the ginger cookies, but they do stay a little taller if you do.  If you are going to roll the dough one tip that worked great for me is to roll it between two pieces of waxed paper.  I've never done that before and it worked so well!  Great gingerbread men!  Then bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.  (ours were only crunchy because we put huge cookies on the same pan with tiny ones, so many of them were really crunchy by the time the big ones were done.)  Remember if you do ginger cookies to pull them out when they are still puffy and look just moist in the middle.  (About 9-10 minutes.  Right when the first ones fall or even JUST before.)  The ones that ended up best were the ones that I was afraid were underdone so I left them on the pan to continue cooking.  They stayed really chewy and good!