Christmas Gingerbread Biscuits

Hello lovely people, apologies for being off radar for a while. Those of you who follow me on social media will have known by now the reason for my silence – I’ve been very busy setting up an online bake shop. The shop went live just a couple of days ago and I’m excited and nervous in equal measure! As due to the pandemic all of my community and private baking classes have been cancelled, I’m now selling delicious homemade biscuits. That said, I haven’t given up on teaching baking; I’m planning on resuming my classes as soon as it’s safe to do so. Let’s all hope it’ll happen next year.

Now, as Christmas is in two weeks’ time I couldn’t not share a festive recipe. As usual, it has to fulfil three basic criteria of a recipe worthy posting on my blog:

• Must be easy.
• No special equipment or rare ingredients are required.
• It’s suitable for ages and levels.

With all that in mind I went for Christmas gingerbread biscuits – a classic Christmas treat everyone loves. Last year I made hundreds of them with my baking groups where the participants’ ages ranged from 2 years to 94! It was lovely to watch my older bakers rolling out fragrant brown dough and being immediately transported back to childhood.

Traditional gingerbread recipe calls for black treacle which is used to sweeten the dough as well as to give it a distinct, rich, “earthy” flavour and colour. Black treacle is a by-product of refining sugar and unlike most of refined sugars it contains minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium and iodine. (No guilt there then!) You will find it in the baking aisle in any bigger supermarket.

To decorate your gingerbread creations you have two options – to keep it simple make a runny icing and drizzle it over the biscuits and either leave them like that or sprinkle with some hundreds and thousands or any other sprinkles of your choice. Alternatively, use a piping bag with a very thin nozzle (number 2) and trace the outline of each biscuit, pipe on tiny dots, draw faces, buttons etc. I’m not a fan of sprinkles, I prefer my biscuits quite traditional and as you can see in the photos my icing is more on a rustic side… Right, without further ado, here is the recipe. You can also download it by clicking the blue button at the bottom.

Christmas Gingerbread Biscuits 

Makes about 25-30 biscuits

Ingredients:

• 180g plain flour
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger (for the plain ginger flavour)
• Optional: 1 teaspoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon ground cloves (for a spicier version)
• 50g caster sugar
• 50g unsalted butter at room temperature, chopped
• 1 small egg, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons black treacle

For the icing:

• 140g icing sugar
• A few tablespoons of water
• Sprinkles (optional)

Method

1. Grease a baking sheet or line it with a baking paper. Place the flour, bicarbonate of soda, sugar, ginger and cinnamon with cloves (if using) in a bowl. Stir together.
2. Tip in the butter and using your fingers rub it in the dry ingredients. Soon you`ll have a bowl full of something resembling breadcrumbs.
3. Pour the black treacle into a saucepan and warm up gradually on a low heat stirring frequently and making sure it doesn’t boil. It should have a consistency of runny honey or melted dark chocolate.
4. Pour about ¾ of the egg into the bowl and mix together with a spoon or a spatula. Next carefully pour the warm black treacle and mix again until the mixture starts clumping together. Don’t worry if it looks a bit lumpy to start with. Shape it into a dough  and knead it for a couple of minutes. This will help the black treacle to blend in fully and dye the dough brown. If the dough feels too sticky add some flour, a tablespoon at a time. If it’s too crumbly, gradually add the remaining egg. The consistency you’re aiming for is a soft playdough.
5. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4. Transfer the dough onto a floured surface and pat it down flat. Dust your rolling pin with some flour. Roll the dough out gently to the thickness of a one-pound coin. Stamp out shapes with biscuit cutters, mould the trimmings into another lump of dough and roll out again.
6. Put the biscuits onto the baking sheet, about 2cm apart so they don’t stick together later on. Bake for about 7 minutes. They may still appear soft and slightly under-baked when you take them out of the oven. Leave them to cool on the baking sheet, they will soon firm up.
7. To make the icing sift the icing sugar into a bowl to remove any lumps.

• For the thicker icing suitable for piping: add about 1½ tablespoons of water and mix well until you have a smooth, thick paste. If it seems too thick and hard to work with, gradually add a few more drops of water. If too thin, add more icing sugar. Transfer into the piping bag and pipe onto the biscuits. Leave the biscuits out for a few hours to allow the icing to set.
• For the runny glaze-like icing: simply add 2-3 tablespoons of water until you have a consistency of runny honey. This kind of icing sets very quickly once spread. If you’re going for sprinkles, in order for them to stick to the icing you will need to decorate your biscuits one by one.

Stay safe and well, have a wonderful Christmas and let’s hope the New Year 2021 will be a much happier one for all of us.

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