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