Do not preheat oven, as this dough must chill at least 2 hours, or overnight.
Combine butter, brown sugar, molasses, and water in a large saucepan over medium-low heat and cook until butter has melted, stirring frequently until smooth. Remove from heat to cool slightly while you continue.
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir to blend. Set aside while you continue.
Once wet mixture is no longer hot, but not entirely cool, quickly whisk in the egg. If it’s too hot, the egg will cook and begin to coagulate, which you do NOT want! If too cool, the butter will become lumpy and the dry ingredients won’t mix in well.
Immediately after adding the egg, stir in the dry ingredients until well combined. Place dough in the refrigerator for a minimum of 2 hours. (We place the whole saucepan in the refrigerator if we don’t need it for anything else. Otherwise, we transfer the dough to a bowl. The dough will be very soft but will harden in the refrigerator. If you plan to chill it longer, form the dough into a ball after 2 hours and wrap in waxed paper, so it will be easier to roll out.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray or rub some oil onto your baking sheet.
Spread some flour onto a cutting board, the counter top or a piece of wax paper on the counter. (A wooden cutting board is our favorite.) Take out enough dough to form a ball about the size of a softball. Place remainder of dough back in the refrigerator until ready to roll out.
Place on the floured surface and use the palm of your hand to flatten it a little.
Turn it over, spreading out the flour on the surface and flatten again. Repeat several times.
Take a rolling pin (or a wine bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin), and begin rolling out the dough, turning it over frequently. Spread out more flour on the surface each time you do turn the dough over.
Roll it out to about just under 1/4-inch thick.
Cut out the desired shapes with a cookie cutter or cut with a knife around a hand-cut shape. Place cookies on the greased baking sheet.
We like to remove some of the excess flour with a pastry brush dipped in water, or by blotting with a damp paper towel.
If you want to frost the cookies, don’t add anything at this point. If not, add eyes, nose, buttons etc., using currants, raisins, chocolate chips or candy decorations (dragées or sprinkles).
Bake 8 minutes. Remove from oven and wait 1 minute before transferring to a cooling rack or a cool surface to continue cooling. Frost cookies if desired. As you can see from this photo, we used a small-tipped tube of white frosting (can be found in grocery stores) to add outlines.
If you don’t want to use frosting or fancy dragées, decorate simply with currants or chocolate chips, like these: