In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together dry ingredients. Add butter and combine until a fine meal forms. Mix molasses with milk. Add to bowl and mix thoroughly.
Divide dough in half or quarters and roll to desired thickness between two pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Roll to ¼" thick for soft and chewy or 1/8" for crisp and crunchy. Set aside on cookie sheets to chill in refrigerator or freeze for 15 minutes, until dough is stiff.
Preheat oven to 350°. Working with one cookie sheet at a time, remove from refrigerator, remove top sheet, cut out cookies, and place on parchment-lined cookie sheet. It is fine to re-roll the dough leftover from cutting out the cookies; gather scraps together, push into a ball of dough, re-roll onto dough sheet. Chill the re-rolled dough again before cutting out the shapes.
Bake in the top third of the oven for 10 to 14 minutes, depending on how large and how thick your cookies are. Adjust baking times to suit your taste. If you are making these to use as decorations, you will need to cut them ¼” thick and cook until crisp, 14 to 16 minutes, or they will be too wobbly to stand up. Carefully poke a small hole in the tops of the cookies with a wooden skewer as soon as they come out of the oven if you want to hang them with ribbon.
Allow to cool for a minute or two before moving to wire rack. Cool completely before decorating. They taste best a couple of days after they are made; keep in airtight container, separated with wax paper or parchment paper.
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated.
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