What's it all about?

What's it all about?

I love cooking, and more importantly, eating good food and I set up this blog to share my favourite recipes, links and ideas with my friends and family.

I am a home cook. Not a particularly distinguished or accomplished one, but someone who simply enjoys honest, fresh and delicious food. I don’t enjoy pretentious restaurants and 'over done' dishes- the kind that you are afraid touch to with your fork for fear of ruining them! And for this reason, every recipe you find here will be simple and open to interpretation. I also believe it’s important to put your own stamp on the food you make so please feel free to change things and substitute ingredients as you wish. Enjoy!

28 December 2010

Homemade gingerbread biscuits

This recipe came to me by way of my work colleague and fellow domestic goddess Katherine Welch. She brought a batch of beautifully shaped gingerbread people into the office for us all to munch on pre-christmas and I had forgotten how much I love them!

Biscuits aren’t usually a part of my cooking repertoire as those lovely people at McVities make them so well, and until today I hadn’t baked any since I was about ten years old. The best piece of advice I can give you is to space the biscuits far apart on the baking tray- they seem to double in size once under heat. Also, flour your cookie cutters well- I gave up on the people shaped cutters after producing three biscuits which looked like victims of an awful limb-loss accident and switched to just rolling them into rounds- see what you think, either way they are delicious.

The dough can also be made in a food processor. If you choose to do this (as i did) just chuck all the ingredients into the machine and blitz until they bind together.

Ingredients
  • 350gms plain flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1tsp ground ginger
  • ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 egg
  • 100gms butter
  • 4 level tbsp golden syrup
  • 175gm soft brown sugar

Method
  1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade and oil and flour a large baking tray.
  2. Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl then rub in the butter using your finger tips to form a breadcrumb-like mixture.
  3. Combine the egg and syrup in a cup then beat into the flour mixture.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface once it forms a ball and knead with a little flour until you have a smooth texture.
  5. Roll out with a well-floured rolling pin to approx 1.5cm thickness and cut into shapes.
  6. Place the shapes onto the baking tray (you may need to cook them in batches as they will need to be spaced at least 2cm apart) and bake for approx 10 mins- keep an eye on them, once they are golden around the edges they are ready.
  7. Use a fish slice to transfer the biscuits to a wire cooling rack and bake the next batch.
  8. Dredge with a little icing sugar and serve.

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