Ingredients for gingerbread Men
- 140g unsalted butter
- 100g dark muscovado sugar
- 3 tbsp golden syrup
- 350g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 tsp ground ginger and 1 tsp ground cinnaman
- pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
- 2 balls stem ginger from a jar, chopped
To decorate
icing, sweets, glacer cherries..whatever you fancy
1. Heat oven to 200C/180C gas mark 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix flour, soda, spices and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir in the butter mix and chopped ginger to make a stiff-ish dough.
3.Roll out dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again.
4. Lift onto baking sheets & bake for 12 mins until golden. Cool 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks.
5. To decorate, mix icing sugar with a few drops of water until thick and smooth.
We also made a ginerbread house at the weekend, but I confess this was not from scratch it was actually a kit I brought from sainsburys (tut tut I know) it was the Dr Oetker kit & was very simple to use but there is many good ones out there .johnlewis.com/ do a Gingerbread House kit for £15.00 that comes in a cute box. The kids enjoyed decorating it & it tasted delicious.
However If you want to make your gingerbread house from scratch here is the recipe
- 250g unsalted butter
- 200g dark muscovado sugar
- 7 tbsp golden syrup
- 600g plain flour
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 4 tsp ground ginger
- 200g bag flaked almonds
- 2 egg whites
- 500g icing sugar , plus extra to dust
- 125g pack mini chocolate fingers
- generous selcetion sweets of your choice, choose your own colour theme
- 1 mini chocolate roll or a dipped chocolate flake
- few edible silver balls
- Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won't quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.
- Cut out the template (see below to download). Put a sheet of baking paper on your work surface and roll about one quarter of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Cut out one of the sections, then slide the gingerbread, still on its baking paper, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels. Any leftover dough can be cut into Christmas trees, if you like.
- Pick out the most intact flaked almonds and gently poke them into the roof sections, pointy-end first, to look like roof tiles. Bake all the sections for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few mins to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
- Put the egg whites in a large bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium nozzle. Pipe generous snakes of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours.
- Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. The angle is steep so you may need to hold these on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight. To decorate, pipe a little icing along the length of 20 mini chocolate fingers and stick these lengthways onto the side walls of the house. Use three, upright, for the door. Using the icing, stick sweets around the door and on the front of the house. To make the icicles, start with the nozzle at a 90-degree angle to the roof and squeeze out a pea-sized blob of icing. Keeping the pressure on, pull the nozzle down and then off - the icing will pull away, leaving a pointy trail. Repeat all around the front of the house. Cut the chocolate mini roll or dipped Flake on an angle, then fix with icing to make a chimney. Pipe a little icing around the top. If you've made gingerbread trees, decorate these now, too, topping each with a silver ball, if using. Dust the roof with icing sugar for a snowy effect. Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread trees around and about using blobs of icing. Your gingerbread house will be edible for about a week but will last a lot longer
(Recipe from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com)
how about these gingerbread house knitted decorations, Cute hey?
for the instructions on how to make them visit http://totallytutorials.blogspot.com/
Already on my "to do list" with a million other things xxx
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