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Christmas time - Ginerbread and wine... I'm sure that's how the song goes. Personally, I do not feel the full Christmas spirit until I've made gingerbread.
Each year however, I forget how temperamental the dough can be if you don't have time for it to rest, cool and set.
Endless crumbling dough frustrates what's supposed to be the quintessential Christmas baking activity. It turns out that that trying to make these in an hour for my cooking class was a bit of a stretch. So I have tried many variations of gingerbread recipes (6 to be exact) and I think I now have a solid recipe and method that will have you (or even your 8 year old child) making, rolling, baking, decorating and eating your gingerbread biscuits within the hour. Oh Christmas is truly a time of miracles!
Notes:
Resting the Dough:
Ideally, you would rest the dough in the fridge for an hour. This will make a huge difference when it comes to rolling out the dough… it will crumble less and be far easier to work with.
Eggs:
You don’t strictly need eggs for this recipe at all. Eggs are used here to help bind the ingredients together and this is a necessary step when you are short of time. In short, if you rest the dough longer you shouldn’t need the eggs. You could always experiment with this.
Extra Flour:
The sooner you start rolling out your dough, the more flour you are likely to need to add. Don’t be afraid to liberally add more flour to get the dough behaving. Gingerbread can be a little (cough; very) temperamental.
Melting the butter, sugar and syrup together:
Many methods involve using a saucepan to dissolve the sugar into the butter and syrup before adding this to the flour and spice mix. I only avoided this method due to practicalities for my cooking club. Nonetheless, I preferred the gingerbread I made using the creaming method. That is simply my preference though, you may want to try this alternate method and see for yourself.
Prep Time: 15 minutes (plus 1hr rest time)
Cooking time: 8-10 minutes
Makes: 30 gingerbread biscuits
Ingredients:
Softened butter 150g
Golden caster sugar: 60g
Dark soft brown sugar: 60g
treacle, or golden syrup: 120g
Egg: 2
plain flour: 500g
bicarbonate of soda: 1 tsp
ground ginger: 2 tsp
ground cinnamon: 1 tsp
Mixed Spice: ½ tsp
Cutters for shaping out your dough
Extra ingredients for decorating: e.g. icing sugar, food dyes, smarties etc...
Method:
Cream together the butter, sugar and syrup. Add the egg and mix together.
In a separate bowl, sift your flour, the bicarbonate of soda, ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice.
Add the flour mix into the butter and sugar mix with a wooden spoon until it forms a dough.
Allow to rest and cool for 5-10 minutes. An hour if you have time.
On a flour dusted surface, roll out the dough and cut out your shapes. Place these on a baking tray (with space between them) and put into the oven at 180°C for 8 minutes. They are ready when the outer edge gets browned but if you like them crunchy then give them a minute or 2 longer.
Whilst the gingerbread cooks and cools, you can prepare the icing by mixing icing sugar and hot water.
Allow to cool on a cooling rack and then decorate as desired.
