One Christmas I spent ages (literally DAYS) trying to find a simple gingerbread recipe. One of those occasions where I couldn’t remember where I had found the recipe I used many years previously. All the recipes I could find online seemed ridiculously complicated and needed specialist ingredients. Then I had a spark of Christmas inspiration and remembered where the original recipe was. And here it is! From the good old Dairy Diary cookbook. This year we have ninja cookie cutters, so our ninjabread will be extra sneaky!
Gingerbread Men
Ingredients
250g plain flour
100g soft brown sugar
2tsp ground ginger
100g baking spread/butter
2tbsp milk
4 tbsp black treacle
decorations!
Method
- Put some Christmas music on – Michael Bublé works well for this recipe.
- Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4.
- Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl – flour, sugar and ginger.
- Pop your butter, milk and treacle in a small saucepan and heat gently until the butter’s melted.
- Take off the heat and let it cool for a couple of minutes.
- Pour the butter mixture into the dry mixture and mix until it starts to come together in a ball.
- Leave the mixture to cool and firm up. You can pop it in the fridge for 20 minutes to speed up the process.
- Roll the gingerbread dough out on a floured surface so it’s about half a centimetre (1/4 inch) thick.
- Cut your shapes! Gingerbread men, women, stars, snowmen (and evidently ninja in our house this year…) all go down exceptionally well!
- You can choose to decorate with raisins before baking or icing once done.
- Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
- Leave to cool on the trays before transferring to a cooling rack.
- Decorate with Smarties or chocolate chips for buttons, mini marshmallow eyes, icing faces, sprinkles and cute Christmas clothes if you wish!
- Christmas is a time for sharing, so invite some friends round and enjoy together. They also make really cute additions to home made hampers. Just pop them into presentation bags – they look super cute!
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