Christmas Gifts - Gingerbread

Today’s sustainable Christmas gift project is …gingerbread men!  Or in this case, gingerbread trees because my kids have lost my gingerbread man cutter.  Nevermind!  Every year I make a huge amount of gingerbread for dispersal at Chrissy gatherings.  The concept is lovely – a folksy Christmas tradition that looks good, smells great and tastes like distilled essence of elves, tinsel and fairy lights all in one.

The reality is appalling.  It takes ages to make, I always have at least eleventy million moments where I think the dough is shot to pieces and can’t be rescued and all up it takes about three hours of my life and approximately four months off my life expectancy.  Yet somehow come November I’ve forgotten all that and I think, “Christmas is coming…I know, I’ll make gingerbread!”

So while the recipe is below I’ve decided to jot down a few important gingerbread-related pointers first as a reality check.  In no particular order;

1.)  It cooks quickly.  By the time you’ve cut out the next tray of gingerbread, the first one will be ready.  It takes about eight minutes which means you’ll be on your feet for at least an hour rotating gingerbread in and out of the oven.  You can tell that it’s ready because the edges of it are turning brown.

2.)  Gingerbread is pretty malleable when it first comes out of the oven and it sweats as it cools.  So use a sturdy egg flip to shift it and make sure it goes onto a flat wire rack – don’t stack them on top of each other to cool or the upper layers will be misshapen and the bottom layers a bit soft.

3.)  If you make it when there are people in the house you need to resign yourself to the reality that not all the gingerbread will survive contact with the enemy.  The very sternest of death threats will ensure that 90% of your biscuits survive until morning but that’s all you can hope for.  You can improve the odds by rolling the last little odds and ends out and baking what I like to call Picasso biscuits which have no discernible shape.  Let the marauders take the Picassos – save the Rembrandts for your Christmas function.

4.)  Take your time making the icing and when it says add the icing to the egg white slowly, we mean s-l-ooooo-w-l-y.  The test to see if you made it right is to tilt the bowl onto its side.  If the icing doesn’t move you made it properly.  The pay off for taking ages to make is of course that gingerbread icing is the easiest icing to work with and goes on beautifully.  Free form any design you like – all these Christmas trees took me ten minutes maximum to ice while Charles applied the “baubles”.  It’s pretty hard to make your biscuits look bad.

5.)  Caveat to #4 – there are no guarantees and sometimes your bikkies will look terrible.  Somehow my snowman started looking like Orko from He-man as I iced him.  

Then Charles got the giggles and gave it eyes.  It was not an improvement.

Please note people that I doubled the recipe below and it made the quantity you see in the photo minus a few test pieces identified for quality control purposes by Charles and Charlotte and, of course, the Picassos.

Ingredients:

125g butter

½ Cup brown sugar packed firmly

1 egg yolk (save the white for icing)

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

3 teaspoons ground ginger

2 cups plain flour

3 tablespoons golden syrup

Icing:

1 egg white

1 cup icing sugar

Method

Cream the butter and sugar until they’re fluffy.

Add the egg yolk and beat well.

In a separate bowl sift the dry ingredients and mix together.

Gradually add the sifted dry ingredients and golden syrup to the butter mix.

Mix well and knead lightly.  If the mix is too dry, add more butter and syrup.  Add more flour if the mix is too sticky.

Rub flour over your rolling pin and then roll your mixture to a height of 3mm.

Cut the biscuits out and place them on a tray lined with baking paper*.

Bake in 180°C oven for 8-10 minutes until gingerbead goes golden brown.

Icing:

After the biscuits have cooled, it’s time to ice them. 

Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.  Place icing sugar in sifter and add gradually while you beat.  One or two taps of the sifter against the beater at a time slow, people, not a quarter of a cup a go. 

Once mixed put it straight into an icing bag and start drawing.  This icing literally “dries out” so the sooner you use it, the better.

For an awesome look add some lollies using the icing as glue.

Om noms people – enjoy your gingerbread!

*  I like to roll the dough out onto baking paper, cut the biscuits and then lift the surplus dough from between the shapes.  I am nowhere near good enough in the kitchen to move raw gingerbread dough from the rolling surface to a tray.  But best of luck to you if you want to give it a go.