Here I am with the 5th part of my series of inexpensive Christmas presents to make for people.
Today, gingerbread men. They look cute, they taste lovely and they're easy to make.
 |
| Source (but caption by me) |
You will need:
- 140g unsalted butter
- 100g dark muscovado sugar
- 3 tbsp golden syrup
- 350g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 tsp ground ginger and 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
- 2 balls stem ginger from a jar, chopped
To decorate:
- 50g icing sugar
- a few glacé cherries (we used undyed)
- 2 balls stem ginger
Method:
Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix flour, soda, spices and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir in the butter mix and chopped ginger to make a stiff-ish dough.
Wait until cool enough to handle, then roll out dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again. Lift onto baking sheets. Bake for 12 mins until golden. Cool 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks.
To decorate, mix icing sugar with a few drops of water until thick and smooth. Halve then slice cherries thinly to make smiles, and cut ginger into small squares. Spoon icing into a food bag, snip off the tiniest bit from one corner, then squeeze eyes and buttons, and a tiny smile onto 1 man at a time. Stick on a cherry smile and ginger buttons. Repeat; leave to set. Will keep up to 1 week in an airtight tin.
Decorating
You can also use raisins, sultanas or Smarties to decorate, if you prefer.
Per serving:
264
kcalories,
protein 3g,
carbohydrate 43g,
fat 10 g,
saturated fat 6g,
fibre 1g,
sugar 20g,
salt 0.33 g.
Presentation:
You could put a jaunty bit of festive ribbon around the neck of each gingerbread man then pop them into a nice airtight glass jar. You can even pop a hole in them with a skewer before you cook them and thread ribbon through and hang them on the tree on Christmas morning.
Have you ever made gingerbread?
I made some for my mum a couple of years ago. I iced the men with pink icing then put them into glass jars. Mum loved them, and she got to keep the jars to put things of her own in afterwards.
Thanks for reading!
