Little Northern Christmas: Gingerbread Recipe

I subscribe to Good Food magazine and each month I love flicking through the latest issue and finding new recipes. Their November edition was outstanding - brimming with fantastic sounding festive recipes that I couldn't wait to try. Top of that list were the mince pies (which I'll be blogging about soon) and their gingerbread. I LOVE gingerbread and thought this recipe sounded fairly straight forward as well as delicious, so I eagerly gave it a go. This is a straight-forward, easy-to-follow recipe that produces delicious tasting gingerbread, which really got me in the festive spirit! 

To make the gingerbread, you will need: 

• 175g dark muscovado sugar
• 85g golden syrup
• 100g slightly salted butter
• 350g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten

Method: 

• Put the sugar, golden syrup and butter in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer, then bubble for 1-2 mins, stirring until well combined. Set aside to cool for 10 mins.
  
  
• Tip the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a large bowl. Add the warm syrup mixture and the egg, stir to bring everything together, then gently knead in the bowl until smooth and streak-free. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for at least 30 mins.

• Remove the dough from the fridge and and leave at room temperature until softened. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and line two baking trays with baking parchment.
  
  
• Working with half the dough at a time (keeping the remaining dough well wrapped), roll out to the thickness of a £1 coin, keeping the dough in a rough rectangle shape.

• Now this is the fun part! Grab some cutters and start making some shapes! I opted for stars (and also did some smaller stars to create a double-stacked star effect. 

• Once you've cut out the pieces, line them on the tray and put in the oven.
  

• How long you need to bake them depends on the size of your shapes, but I baked mine for around 10 minutes. They need to be a little darker than when they first went in, and also a bit higher. 
  
  
• Take them out the oven and leave to cool. Once cool, they can be decorated how you wish. 
  
  
• To decorate my stars I took a bit of a shortcut and used ready-made royal icing. All I had to do was roll it out, cut it into a star shape using a cutter, and then place it on the gingerbread. (I used a little runny icing sugar to stick the royal icing in place.) 

Then, grab a cuppa, a piece of delicious gingerbread and enjoy! Perfect :)