Run, run as fast as you can!

Christmas time, and it is gingerbread man time! This is becoming a Christmas tradition, I think this will be the third year in a row that I have made gingerbread for Christmas Day!


The first year my sister E and I made them, and we had lots of fun decorating them! The first rack shown left are some of the efforts of 2007. Last year Mum asked me to make them again, and one of her requests was to make smaller sizes. I spent a few hours on Christmas morning decorating them, and decided that larger sizes were much, much better (and quicker to decorate!).

This year, Mum has put in a special request for extras for their annual friends barbecue, and C has also asked for some to take down south to Peaceful Bay when he goes camping, as we took the leftovers last year and they were a hit!

The recipe that I use is very simple, it is from the Australian Women's Weekly! I am fairly sure that it is the same recipe as was in the "AWW Beautiful Biscuits" cook book, that K3 and I used back in high school to make gingerbread! At least, I hope it is, because that is the recipe that I was searching for.

Anyway, here is the recipe, with my notes.

125g butter
½ cup (100g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg yolk
2 ½ cups (375g) plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons ground ginger
½ cup (125 ml) golden syrup

Beat butter until it lightens in colour, then add the sugar and cream. Add the egg yolk and beat until combined.


Sift dry ingredients together. Mix into the butter mixture with the golden syrup and bring together. I tried to mix mine in with the mixmaster today until it started jumping out of the bowl. At that point I tipped it onto a large wooden chopping board that I had dusted flour over. I wore a glove to knead to keep the heat of my body off the gingerbread and to keep my hands clean!

I put it into the fridge to help make it easier to roll, as the dough was quite soft.

About now is a good idea to preheat your oven to 180C! By the time you roll out the dough and cut all of the shapes it should be heated!

Roll out between 2 sheets of baking paper until approximately 3mm thick. Cut gingerbread shapes from the dough and place on baking paper in biscuit trays. Bake for 10 minutes or until lightly golden.

I would like to point out too that the different sized biscuits will cook at different rates, it usually takes me a few trays to remember this and so the larger biscuits will be perfect texture and the smaller ones will be hard!

Reroll dough as many times as necessary. Cool on trays.

1 egg white
1 ½ cups pure icing sugar, sifted

For the icing, make sure that you use beaters to properly beat the egg white to peaks then gradually add the icing sugar. I made this once and I did not think it clear in the recipe - so I just used a wooden spoon. The icing did not set properly!

Divid icing evenly into bowls and tint as desired. Keep bowls covered when not using the icing. Spoon icing into a piping bag and decorate biscuits as desired.