Gingerbread Men …

Making Gingerbread Men is so much fun and a great cooking activity to share with kids. My girls have always enjoyed making and decorating these little guys and we’ve now got quite a collection of cookie cutters in all shapes and sizes.

A great recipe to make on the weekend to include in lunchboxes through the week, these biscuits will store well in a sealed container for up to a week. This is also a lovely recipe to make at Christmas time to give out as gifts. Enjoy!

Gingerbread Men …

 

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Author: Mrs Organised

Ingredients …

• ¾ cup butter
• ¾ cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup maple syrup
• 1 ½ tbspns white vinegar
• 4 cups plain flour, sifted
• 1 tspn bicarb soda
• 1 ½ tspn ground ginger
• ¾ tspn ground cinnamon
• ½ tspn ground cloves
• ½ tspn salt

Method …

1. Preheat oven to 180C (fan-forced oven) and lightly grease two baking trays (or line with baking paper).
2. Cream butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
3. Stir in egg, maple syrup and vinegar and beat well.
4. Add flour, bicarb soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and salt and stir until all ingredients are combined thoroughly.
5. Remove dough from bowl, halve the dough and roll into two balls. Place one ball of dough on a piece of baking paper, cover with another piece of baking paper and roll the dough out to approximately 3 mm thick using a rolling pin.
6. Remove top piece of baking paper and cut out the desired shapes using a cookie cutter. Use a spatula/egg flip to move the shapes to the lightly-greased baking trays. Place shapes approximately 2 cm apart to allow for spreading. Repeat with the second ball of dough.
7. Re-roll any left over dough and repeat until all dough has been used.
8. Bake gingerbread men for approximately 8 ½ minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool for 2 – 3 minutes on baking tray and then transfer biscuits to a cooling rack.
9. Once cool, decorate as desired.
10. This recipe will make approximately 40 biscuits depending on how thick the dough is and the size and shape of the biscuits.

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Clever Tricks, Tips and Hints …

• If you don’t have any maple syrup in the pantry, honey or treacle will substitute well.

• To ice these I used the Queen Decorating Icing Kit. The kit includes 3 coloured icings (white, pink and brown) with 4 different nozzle designs. Attach the nozzle of choice to the icing tube and then use a writing motion to decorate.

• Some gingerbread recipes will suggest you wrap the dough in cling film (Glad Wrap) and refrigerate for an hour or so to rest before rolling and cutting the dough. I didn’t with this recipe and it worked just fine.

• Smarties and M&M’s can also be used to decorate your gingerbread men … attach with a small amount of icing.