Gingerbread Families

At the beginning of term I made gingerbread people to take to school for one of the book groups I run to decorate. I made 31 of them and that was not nearly enough to go round! Thankfully I made a few cupcakes too as did one of my colleagues but we were still giving one between two! In the end we had 120 pupils! In the interests of fairness I made both men and women and then children too to use all the dough.

We had some really fantastically decorated gingerbread people, I think this is Goldilocks!

And this is definitely Harry Potter!

I made half with a honey gingerbread recipe from The Guardian and they were really good, lovely and gingery. The other half I made with a BBC recipe, which were also really good.

Honey Gingerbread Men (from The Guardian)

150g soft brown sugar
150g honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated
100g unsalted butter
1½ tsp baking powder
400g plain flour
pinch of salt
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 160C. Put the sugar, honey, cinnamon, ginger and butter in a pan over a low heat, stirring to dissolve, then slowly bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Cool to room temperature, then mix in the baking powder.

Sieve the flour into a bowl with the salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in the syrupy mixture, followed by the egg. Stir from the centre, until the flour becomes a dough. If the dough is dry or crumbly, add a little milk, 1 tbsp at a time, until the dough comes together. Knead it gently to bring it all together. Flatten it into a disc shape, wrap in parchment paper and rest in the fridge for 30 mins.

Roll out the dough until it's ½cm thick. The thicker the biscuit, the chewier it will be. Cut into shapes. Use a skewer to make holes for eyes and buttons.

Lay the gingerbread men on lined baking sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes.