Gingerbread shapes have always been one of my favorite Christmas treats. Mum always made them with my brother and I; truly it was amazing any of them lasted long enough to be decorated!
Although they are ridiculously easy to make, they do seem to create a fairly large amount of mess…the kitchen will look like a flour snow storm has blown through…so I figure you might as well make a decent sized batch. This amount will make about 40-50 odd biscuits, but really this depends on the sizes and shapes of your cutters {and how much dough gets eaten in the process}.
gingerbread shapes
ingredients
- 250g butter, softened
- 200g brown sugar
- 250ml golden syrup
- 2 egg yolks
- 750g plain flour
- 2 Tbs ground ginger
- 2 tsp mixed spice (if you don’t have mixed spice on hand just add 1 tsp of nutmeg and 1 tsp of cinnamon instead)
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
method
- Preheat oven to 175 degrees C and place sheets of baking paper on two trays.
- In a mixer beat the butter and brown sugar until combined and pale.
- Separate the eggs, placing only the yolks into the butter and sugar mixture with the golden syrup. Beat until combined {you will probably need to scrape down the mixer bowl at this stage}.
- In another bowl combine the dry ingredients, make sure you mix well and there are no clumps of bicarb soda.
- Gradually add the dry ingredient mix into the mixer, once about half is combined you will need to turn the mix out into a large bowl and mix by hand to combine the rest of the flour etc. Your poor mixer will thank you, as there are some things which just have to be done by hand…and dough mixing like this is one of them.
- Once the mix is combined roughly divide into two and wrap each in plastic wrap. Pop them in the fridge for at least half an hour; this will make it easier to roll out.
- Remove one of the dough balls from the fridge and cut off half. If it is quite hot, like it is at my place, just keep the dough you’re not using in the fridge until you’re ready to roll it out.
- Dust your bench and rolling pin with plain flour. Give the cool dough a quick knead and roll out until about 5mm thick. Dust your shapes with flour and get cutting your shapes. Place the shapes on the trays about 1 cm apart.
- Bake for 10 minutes or until brown on the edges.
- Repeat steps 7-9 until all the dough is used.
decoration
Really this part is totally up to you. Royal icing, fondant {like I have used here} or just plain, either way they will be delicious.
If you would like to cover with fondant simply roll out your desired color of ready to roll fondant quite thinly, about 3mm. Use the same shape cutter to cut out the shape in fondant. I brush a little bit of vodka onto the biscuit, so that the fondant sticks, and then gently place the fondant on top. Honestly the world is your oyster, channel your inner five year old and treat it like adult play-dough.
By placing them in little gift bags, once the fondant has dried a bit, they will make really cute little gifts. These ones found their way to my colleagues…they didn’t last long!
