Recipe: Best Gingerbread

In the past week or so I have shared the Onion Jam and Glitter Honeycomb recipes that I used to make some lovely homemade Christmas presents for my loved ones. Now, I want to give you the best Gingerbread recipe I have found (and slightly adapted).

This recipe makes a lightly spiced, half bread-half biscuit textured Gingerbread which I think is delicious. And so did my recipients.

Gingerbread (makes 24 biscuits)

• 350g Plain Flour (plus a little more for rolling out)
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
• 2 tsp Ground Ginger
• 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 125g  Butter (slightly softened at room temperature)
• 175g Light Soft Brown Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 4 tbsp Golden Syrup

1. Prepare your food processor on the work surface and into the bowl sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon (if you wish you could add a teaspoon of ground nutmeg too).
2. Add the butter the food processor bowl and blend. Once the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, add the sugar.
3. In a seperate bowl, whisk together the egg and golden syrup. Then add to the food processor. The mixture should now clump together.
4. Tip the dough onto a clean work surface and knead until you have nice smooth ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C and line several baking trays with baking paper.
6. Once chilled, lightly flour your clean work surface and roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/2 cm.
7. Using whatever biscuit cutters you have (gingerbread men are great here but I used simple rounds) cut out the shapes and place on the baking trays. Make sure you leave a gap between each one as they will expand in the oven.
8. Bake for 10-15 minutes (depends how hot your oven is) until a light golden brown.
9. Allow to cool on tray for 10 minutes before moving to a wire cooling rack.
10. Either decorate to your hearts content or scoff the lot before anyone notices.

Remember, Gingerbread is for life not just for Christmas.

Tagged as: christmas, food, gingerbread, homemade, recipe