Photos show how common baking mistakes can drastically change your gingerbread cookies

Insider

• I made gingerbread cookies from scratch and messed up several times along the way (on purpose!) to see how each mistake would affect the texture, taste, and look of the cookies.
• From doubling up on molasses to using too much flour, there is a lot that can go wrong.
• Forgetting the molasses resulted in a crumbly cookie that was light in color.
• Combining all ingredients at once created lumps in the finished product.

I've become familiar with the myriad failures that are possible when it comes to baking from scratch. I've (purposely) messed up dozens of batches of chocolate-chip cookies, banana bread, brownies, pumpkin pie, and more, all while trying to nail down what each mistake would do to the finished product.

In the spirit of the wintertime holidays, I tried my hand at gingerbread cookies for the first time.

For consistency, I used the same Martha Stewart recipe I found online and a single gingerbread person cookie cutter for each batch.

From adding too much molasses to forgetting the egg, here's what happened when I made 14 classic mistakes while baking gingerbread cookies.