gingerbread man

spend one whole evening/night making gingerbread men as Xmas gifts for my friends
I'm so tired now and my back is aching =(
but its worth it...seeing the happy colourful smiley gingerbread men
(that will soon be eaten and digested by digestive juices..muahahha)
here is the recipe (got it from my cousin)

ingredients
125 gram butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate
3 teaspoon ground ginger
2 1/2 tablespoon golden syrup

for the royal icing
1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar
i egg white
4 drops lemon juice
food colouring

(no need to make so much royal icing, half the portion is more than enough)

method:
1. cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. add egg yolk and beat well
2. gradually add the sifted ingredients (flour, sodium bicarbonate and ginger powder) and golden syrup. mix well
3. knead the dough lightly and divide it into six portion
4.roll each portion on a piece of grease proof paper and use a cookie cutter to cut. be very very careful, gingerbread men are very fragile thingys =p then using a spatula, transfer the cookie on a baking pan.
5. bake the cookies in a preheated oven (at 180 Celsius) for 10 minutes.
6. for the royal icing: sift icing sugar, beat egg white lightly in a small bowl. add icing sugar one tablespoon at a time until it reaches piping consistency. beat in lemon juice and desired food colouring.
7. Decorate gingy!!! the most fun (and tiring) part!

*can use chocolate chips as the buttons.use the icing sugar as a "glue", the icing sugar will eventually harden. you can get silver balls, fancy colourful shapes in ingredient shops and even supermarkets! be creative!!*

this recipe makes about 15-20 gingy, depending on the size of the cookie cutter.
speaking of which...i nearly couldn't make gingerbread men this year cos i didn't have the cutter as my cousin wanted to use it. so today when i was wandering in cold storage in subang parade with my dad while waiting for mummy to finish her "jamuan"
i saw this cute lil' crispy chocolate gingerbread boy. then i look closely and saw 4 magic words...
"REAL COOKIE CUTTER INCLUDED"
i was so happy!!!hahahah
a green plastic cutter! hooray!

this thing saves the day!!! :)

so i went back to make!
from 5pm till 7pm...
then 8pm till 10pm.
PHEW~
hard work~
i made two batches...30 plus gingies all together and a few stars...
i don't even like ginger. LOL.

decorating tools

the dough

my precious cookie cutter!

be extra careful while handling gingy!
the cookie will expand slightly, so don't put too near each other

the royal icing. separate it before adding different food colouring (obviously....)


gingerbread man

and gingerbread stars!!

happy baking
and merry Christmas!