• Combine flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt in a bowl and set aside.
• With a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment neat butter until smooth and creamy. Add in brown sugar, molasses, and honey and mix until combined. Add egg, vanilla, and lemon zest(if using) and beat on high speed for around 2 minutes.
• On low speed, slowly mix dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. The dough will be sticky and thick.
• Divide the dough in half, form a disc, and wrap tightly into plastic wrap. Chill in a refrigerator at least for 3 hours, preferably overnight.
• Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Flour the work surface, your hands, and rolling pin and unwrap one piece of dough. The dough is sticky so continually flour the work surface as needed. Roll out the disc into approximately 0.5 cm (1/4 inch) thick. Cut out cookies. Repeat with the remaining disc of dough.
• Line cookies on baking sheets approx. 2.5 cm (1 inch) apart.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on your oven and the size of a cookie-cutter. If smaller cookie cutter, bake around 8 minutes if it is larger bake around 10 minutes. I like mine a bit softer, so I bake them around 8 minutes until they a slightly set, but still soft in the middle. Rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking.

Icing:

• Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl until smooth. If your icing is too thin, add in a little more powdered sugar. If your icing is too thick, add in a tiny bit of milk or water. If you drizzle a little of the icing with the whisk, the ribbon of icing will hold for a few seconds before melting back into the icing. That is when you know it's the right consistency and is ready to use.
• Use a piping bag, or a ziplock bag (with the corner snipped off), or a plastic squeeze bottle to pipe the icing onto the cookies.