• In a large bowl, add whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking soda and salt. Whisk until no lumps and set aside.
• In another large bowl, add butter and sugar. Beat with an electric mixer until combined and creamy. Add egg and molasses. Beat until combined well (don't overbeat to prevent butter separation).
• Add flour mixture, first stir with spatula and then mix with your hands until a ball of dough forms.
• Divide it into two balls, place on two separate sheets of plastic wrap, flatten into discs, wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line two large baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper. Set aside.
• Remove chilled dough from the fridge, let warm up on the counter for 5 minutes, and unwrap from plastic. Dust the surface and rolling pin with flour and roll the dough 1/4 inch thick. If dough is hard and crumbly, roll it out as best as you can, let warm up a few minutes and roll more until 1/4 inch thick.
• Using your favorite cookie cutters, cut out cookies and transfer to previously prepared baking sheet (loosening with small spatula if necessary), leaving just 1/2 inch in between. These cookies do not spread much. Combine the dough scraps into a ball, roll it out, cut out cookies and repeat until you run out of dough. Repeat the same step with the second disc of dough.
• Bake for 8 minutes for soft cookies and 12 minutes for crunchy cookies. Do not overbake as cookies will harden during resting. Remove from the oven and let gingerbread cookies first cool off on a baking tray for 15 minutes, then transfer onto a cooling rack to cool off completely.

To decorate cookies:

• In a small bowl, add icing sugar and water; whisk until smooth and no lumps.
• Transfer to a sandwich size resealable bag, push to one corner, twist bag on top and cut a tiny hole at the tip. The smaller the better as you can always make the hole bigger but not smaller.
• Decorate cookies as you wish by pushing icing through the hole. Let icing dry and it will harden and set within a couple of hours. Do not stack them until then.