Imaginative Cookery: It’s Raining Men, Gingerbread Men!
Here I am continuing to work on my new mission of bringing you ideas. Which brings me neatly to a recipe that I personally get a little nostalgic about. It’s more widely associated with Christmas but, why should the time of year stop you from making something delicious?
Reason For Nostalgia
In Norway, we have different things at Christmas, firstly something called “kakermann”, which is a vanilla cookie that has a cakey consistency in the shape of a man, sort of. We have something else called “pepperkaker”, which is similar to ginger nut biscuits with less ginger and more black pepper. But I have yet to see a “pepperkakermann”, or a pepper-cake-man. Although I have no doubt that they exist, somewhere. However, that is why gingerbread men make me feel so nostalgic, they are my taste of Britain, they remind me of home. So why should I have to wait for Christmas to taste nostalgia?
I love to cook, I love food, I especially love eating (which explains my fluctuating waistline) and baking is a treat that I don’t always get to indulge in. So when a little friend of mine (a friend’s daughter, almost an adopted niece) asked if we could bake together I was delighted to oblige. What better recipe to share with a child than gingerbread men?!
So We Begin
I give all due credit to Windows Food &Drink App, and Illustrated Step by Step Baking which is where I got this recipe. I’d just like to say that the ounce measurements came from a conversion online, I just hope they’re right!
4 tbsp syrup
2 1/3 cups (18 1/2 oz) flour
1tsp baking powder
1 1/2tsp ground ginger
1 1/2tsp ground cinnamon
7tbsp (3 1/2 oz) diced butter
3/4 cup (6 oz) dark brown sugar
1 large egg
Decorations and icing.
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. In a saucepan warm the syrup till it's runny, then leave it to cool on one side. Sift or whisk the flour, baking powder and spices together in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour/spice mix until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix it in well. In the cooled syrup beat the egg. Then making a well in the flour mix, pour in the syrup mix and bring together into a dough. I found that it was quite sticky, but persevere and do your best to make a dough ball. Then on a floured surface knead the dough lightly with plenty of flour if its sticky until smooth and roll out. Roll out to about 1/4inch, and then using cutter, cut out as many as possible. Re-rolling leftover dough and continuing to cut out shapes until all the dough is used up. I managed about 18 gingerbread men. At this point you can add raisins on your gingerbread men for eyes and buttons, I didn’t do that, I preferred to decorate afterwards. Bake for 10-12 mins until golden. Leave them to cool on a wire rack. When they are completely cool use icing to decorate and to stick sweets to them. I cheated and bought prepared icing in a tube, but it would work just as well with homemade icing and a piping bag.
And Serve!
This photo was taken after my little friends had gotten a hold of quite a few of my gingerbread creations, which explains why some of them have disappeared. I, innocently enough, made some a little detailed. I really should have paid more attention to the shape of the sweets I was sticking to my gingerbread men/women.
Oh well it didn’t stop them from being delicious. When I took these to a friend’s for the weekend, her troupe of rugrats devoured them all and complained there weren’t enough, in spite of the odd decorations! I learned my lesson, make a double batch next time!
Hope you find time to bake your own creations. Please leave a comment, tell me if you tried this recipe maybe. Please subscribe, follow me on Google+, Twitter or Facebook. Till next time.
Davita
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