And came across one of the most lovely blogs I have seen. Exclusively Food, a blog by Amanda and Debbie, has great recipes and beautiful photographs. Their gingerbread people are incredibly cute, and thankfully my nephew loved them too.
So armed with their recipe, I had 3 kids making gingerbread cookies. They came out absolutely delicious! We didn't quite get to make people as I don't have great cookie cutters, but we made several different shapes. Our artistic talents were also slightly lacking. And most of the cookies were eaten before we could even get to the icing stage!
Gingerbread Cookies
(adapted from Exclusively Food)
2 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
140 g Butter, softened
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 large Egg, divided into yolk and white
1 tsp Cinnamon Powder
1 tsp Nutmeg Powder
3 tsp Ginger (I used ginger paste)
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 cup Golden Syrup
Stir together in a bowl, the flour, baking soda and spices.
In another large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar together. Add the egg yolk and golden syrup and beat together until combined. Slowly add in the flour mixture until just combined.
Preheat oven to 180 deg C. And line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Divide the dough into halves. Roll out one half between two sheets of baking paper or parchment paper. Transfer to the freezer. Repeat for the other half. Let the dough freeze for about 15-20 minutes. This is essential - its really difficult to work with the soft dough before freezing.
Remove from the freezer and cut desired shapes. Transfer to the baking sheet carefully and bake for 10 minutes until firm. Let cool for 5 minutes and transfer to a wire rack.
While the cookies are baking, whisk together the icing:
Icing
1 1/3 cup Icing Sugar
1 Egg White (the one you saved from the yolk above)
Combine very well until a pale white. Add food coloring if you'd like. Decorate the cookies (I used Ziploc bags with a tiny bit of the edge cut off to pipe the icing onto the cookies) after they have cooled a bit from the oven. And let the icing set completely (of course, we didn't wait at all!).
They were fantastic. Thanks so much for a keeper recipe!!
