In a stand mixer, or a large bowl with a hand mixer, add softened butter and brown sugar. Cream together until light and fluffy.

Add molasses, egg, and vanilla. Mix until well incorporated.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

Slowly add the flour mixture to your stand mixer, allowing each addition to get mostly incorporated before adding more.

Once the dough is mixed, generously flour your work surface, either a clean counter or a large piece of parchment paper, and dump your dough onto the floured surface.

Flour your hands, or use a piece of parchment paper to fold the dough together enough to wrap it in parchment and place in a gallon ziploc bag.

Let the dough chill in the refrigerator for at least 6 hour, or for best results, overnight.

After the dough has chilled, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Generously flour your work space again, plus your hands and rolling pin.

Roll out your gingerbread dough, until ¼ inch thick. The edges don’t need to be perfect, they may crack but that’s okay.

Use your gingerbread man cookie cutter to cut out ¼ inch thick ginger men in all of the places you can where the dough is solid, avoiding any thinner or cracked edges. We are going to re-roll the excess dough.

Place your cut out ginger men on the prepared baking sheet. Gather up your leftover dough, and re-roll to repeat this process and make more ginger men, until all the dough is used up. For best results, and because this may take a while, chill your cut out gingerbread men in the refrigerator again for about 45 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool on a wire rack.

Once cookies have cooled, turn the gingerbread men upside down and use the melted chocolate to attach your candy eyes & M&M noses, and then draw on your reindeer antlers.