I love making these personalised edible gingerbread decorations for our Christmas tree!  They’re fun, festive and a great activity even the youngest children can join in with.

I’ve kept these simple with just a white icing name but with a few smarties, hundreds and thousands, food colouring and some imagination they can be as bright and colourful as you like.

Ingredients

• 140g unsalted butter
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• a gingerbread man cutter
• an old biro tube (washed)

TO DECORATE

• 50g icing sugar

Method

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.
2. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.
3. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan.
4. Mix flour, soda, spices and a pinch of salt in a bowl.
5. Stir in the butter mix  to make a stiff-ish dough.
6. Wait until cool enough to handle, then roll out dough to about 5mm thick.
7. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again.
8. Use the tube from an old biro (washed) to stamp out hanging holes in the heads of your gingerbread men.
9. Lift onto baking sheets.
10. Bake for 12 mins until golden.
11. Cool for 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks.
12. To decorate, mix icing sugar with a few drops of water until thick and smooth and pipe on to spell names or use as a glue to stick on other decorations.
13. Leave to set then use shiny parcel tie or classic kitchen twine to make hangers.
14. Will keep up to 1 week in an airtight tin or a couple of days hanging on the tree (if they last that long!)