Christmas 2013 Is Approaching……. Gingerbread Man Biscuits

INTRODUCTION

Christmas is approaching, less than 1.5 months away. It is time to start prepare Christmas cuisines. I have a post on Christmas Boiled Fruit Cake in early October 2013 and I believed that is the right time to get ready the fruit cakes for Christmas purposes. More of more post on Christmas cuisines will be coming soon and next in the pipeline will be another fruit cake that I am going to prepare for my relatives to bring back to their home town.

Being an Asian and non-Christian, I don’t really celebrate Christmas though I have fond memories of my childhood years where my brother and I always spent our Christmas eves in one of our families’ friends house. Prior to the Christmas eve gathering, we were busy buying presents for gift exchange but the dinner we had were not really a Christmas dinner. It is just a normal buffet spread. Therefore, I am rather ignorance on authentic Christmas celebrations.

It is common to see gingerbread man in Christmas decorations in the shopping arcades in Singapore and Malaysia but the very first time I got in touch with the gingerbread man was about 6-7 years back where I celebrated Christmas with my family in Kuala Lumpur. At that time, my girl is only 4 years old and in the shopping centre that we shopped, the shopping centre has organised some fun activities for the kids and all kids were invited to participate in the making of gingerbread man. After the activities, she brought back a big gingerbread man and she made and that was the first time I tasted the biscuit.

As usual, lets learn together from Wikipedia about the background of this biscuit:

“A gingerbread man is a biscuit or cookie made of gingerbread, usually in the shape of a stylized human, although making other shapes, especially seasonal themes (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc.) and characters, are quite common as well. Gingerbread dates back to the 15th century, and figural biscuit-making was practiced in the 16th century. The first documented instance of figure-shaped gingerbread-biscuits appearing was in the court of Elizabeth I of England. She had the gingerbread figures made and presented in the likeness of some of her important guests.” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread_man)

It is fun and easy to make the biscuits. You may want to consider making some of these biscuits as Christmas gifts to your friends. The recipe covers the making of the basic biscuits and will not cover in detail the icing and decorations of the biscuits. I have used some royal icing and pen writing nozzles to decorate the biscuits. That is not perfect as icing is not my area of strength.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: Gingerbread Men From BBC

Servings: Made about 30-40 small to medium size biscuits

350 grams of plain flour
4 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of minced ginger
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of mixed spice (for lapis cake is acceptable)
125 grams of butter
175 grams of brown sugar (optional)
1 egg

Others (Not in picture)

Gingerbread man cutter
Writing icing (royal icing)
Red and green permitted food colouring

Note that in this illustration, I did not add in any sugar as I want it to be just plain biscuits like the saltine biscuits. You can add in the sugar of the quantity that you prefer.

STEPS OF PREPARATION

Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius and line 2 baking trays with parchment paper.

Put all the dry ingredients (butter, ginger, flour, baking soda, minced ginger and mixed spice) and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Blend until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Add in lightly beaten eggs and golden syrup. Continue to blend or pulse until the mixture sticks together become the dough. Take the dough out and roll into 0.5 thickness flat sheet.

Use the gingerbread man cutter to cut out the shapes and place on the baking tray and leaving some space between them. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until the biscuits turn light brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes before moving to the wire rack for cooling. Let it cool completely before decorate the gingerbread man.

Get ready 9 tablespoons of royal icing (I bought the ready made icing) and divide into 3 portions. Add some red colouring to one portion and green colouring to another portion. Stir well and you should have 1 portion of white icing, 1 portion of green icing and 1 portion of red icing. Put the icing in three icing bag with either a pen writing nozzle or cut a small hole in front of the icing bag. Decorate the gingerbread man to your desired pattern. If the purchased icing is too dry (meaning hard to pump out), add a “DROP” or two of water to the icing before pumping. Store in an air tight container for up to 2-3 weeks.

CONCLUSION

For me, I love the taste of the biscuits. It is quite addictive though it is just plain biscuit with cinnamon and ginger aroma. Pumping of icing is my weakness and I am sure you can create much better looking gingerbread man than me ..May be it is time for you to get ready making some gingerbread man biscuits as your Christmas gifts. Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

For more recipes, you can refer to my RECIPE INDEX here and you can follow me at PINTEREST or visit this blog’s FACEBOOK PAGE .

If you are a Pinterest user and you are interested to have more recipes, you can join or follow this Pinterest Board set up by me where there are more than 250 recipes worldwide and pinned by various bloggers: FOOD BLOGGERS AND FOODIES UNITED PINTEREST BOARD

For Four Seasons Blog Hop #25 (Nov 6) where I am the Co-host, please join us for the party where you can get a lot of the family related posts. Please click the above logo to enter your post.