A few weeks ago, we had our niece over to stay for the weekend. She's 6 years old, likes to cook and she likes to be a helper, so it was pretty straightforward getting her help to make a batch of gingerbread men. This is another easy recipe, requiring only a few ingredients and is a good one for older kids to help out with in the kitchen, especially the sifting, mixing, cutting out and decorating. Ingredients are:
- 125g butter
- 1/2 cup caster sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
- 3 teaspoons of ground ginger
- 2 1/2 tablespoons of golden syrup
- currants
- glace cherries
- sweets to decorate (I used Smarties)
Knead the mixture lightly and roll out to about 3mm thickness on a lightly floured board. Once rolled out, cut using a floured gingerbread man cutter, as shown below. This sized cutter with the quantities of dough from the recipe produces 8-10 gingerbread men.
Then lift the shapes carefully and arrange them on a greased baking sheet. Now comes the fun bit - decorate the gingerbread men using the currants for eyes and pieces of glace cherry for noses My helper below did a great job in decorating the gingerbread men, don't you think?
Once ready, bake in a moderate oven for 15 minutes. When done, remove from oven and cool on the trays. Once cool, transfer to a wire rack for further decorating. We used Smarties cut in half for mouths and whole Smarties for buttons. A little dab of jam helps act as 'glue' to hold the Smarties on to the gingerbread men. You can of course, also eat the Smarties you don't use.
Having done that, there's not much more left to do than make a nice cup of tea or coffee (or a glass of milk for the young 'uns) and enjoy.
I hope readers like this recipe. I certainly did as I haven't had a homemade gingerbread man since I was a boy many, many years ago.
