Gingerbread People

A recipe from the Big Lunch because gingerbread men make most people smile and they're fun to make. This is a pretty rufty, tufty dough which can stand up to kiddies messing about with it, there's no messing about "making the mixture like small breadcrumbsetc" you just whack it in a mixer. As black treacle is used they do come out quite dark gingerbreads you can always use Golden syrup instead if you like them more pasty faced, I don't, I like a nice sun bronzed ginger myself. This works just as well in any shape so could be valentines cookies or alphabet letters, anything really.

Ingredients and how to make

•400g plain flour
•¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
•2tsp ground ginger
•2tsp ground cinnamon
•½ tsp ground allspice
•¼ tsp ground nutmeg
•½ tsp salt
•180g unsalted butter, at room temperature
•125g soft dark brown sugar or dark muscovado sugar
•1 egg (always free range and preferably from a hen whose name you know)
•125g black treacle

•Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

•Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg and treacle. Life’s short, so use a hand mixer.

•Slowly add the flour mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time, you have to stop quite a bit to scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl. Once the dough has formed, take it out of the mixer, divide into 3 and wrap each piece in clingfilm- basically its easier to roll out in smaller chunks than one big one)

•Leave to rest overnight (if possible, unlikely in V world) in the fridge. If not just stick it in there for half an hour while you have a cup of tea and a biscuit.

•When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F) Gas 3.

•Take the dough out of the fridge and leave to soften for about 10 minutes. Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour and roll out the dough to a thickness of about 4mm with a rolling pin. Cut out shapes with the biscuit cutters (they do make great Ginger people but also a tip for you single men out there - lovely hearts and flowers biscuits for Valentine’s Day). Pop some Smarties on for buttons if you fancy Arrange the cookies on the prepared baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for about 10–15 minutes.

•Leave the cookies to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Decorating - now this is the fun bit. You can make your own icing of course but it's just as easy to buy the ready to pipe stuff in very handy tubes. For the Big Lunch I did all shapes and sizes. There was "Corporate Man" with his piped shirt collar and tie. "Y fronts man" who had Y fronts and a bow tie and "Medallion Man" who you guessed it sported his rather fetching gold neckchain.

There was also "Yummy Mummy" and "Granny Ginge" .One thing you learn when cutting out Ginger people is that as in life Gingerbread Women need lots more dough, they just do OK ;)

Happy Ginger baking

A great Big Lunch

Let's face it, the world's been a bit grey lately with banks collapsing, unemployment through the roof and well basically everything going a bit shape of the pear. So I got thinking about the nature of community spirit in the village and my initial thought was "what community spirit?". It was a deep thought I know, so deep I probably felt the need for another glass of wine and possibly some cheesy wotsits as I pondered some more. Then it came to me a flash of inspiration, well more of a pop up on Facebook really which presumably had picked up on my rather humphy musings on village life. There it was a link to the Big Lunch. Being a girl that likes my food I obvisouly clicked on that one pretty sharpish. There it was, the perfect plan 5th June The Big Lunch a get together for neighbours. I liked the idea behind the Big Lunch which you can read all about at www.thebiglunch.com basically that the world's a better place if everyone gets together and gets on and shares stuff.

So I got organising, recruiting people to help (not many did but those who did were fantastic). Along the way we hand delivered nearly 400 invitations, put up approximately 65 posters, made bunting and banners and basically blagged and borrowed anything and everything possible. The Village Hall was acquired for the day (think the Parish Council were slightly bemused by my odd idea) and the field borrowed (that required shifting the pony and clearing up nine bin bags of his pony poo just in case the toddlers fell in it).

I decided to do a cake stall for Macmillan's Cancer Support, in memory of mum, sort of seemed right somehow as she taught me baking - butterfly cakes with cream and jam. A true baking frenzy for me of chocolate brownies, chocolate cupcakes with pink icing and daisies, scones for afternoon teas, coffee and walnut cakes and gingerbread men. The Ginger clan included, Corporate Man, Y Fronts Man and Yummy Mummy, I think I may have had too much sugar by this point and gone a bit whoo.

Cake Stall
On the day the sun shone, perfect weather for a picnic.We decked out the Village Hall with bunting and a giant picnic table filled with flowers and balloons. People were happy to have a chat over tea, coffee, squash and nibble on scones filled with jam and cream. With the sun shining people brought everything from picnic blankets and hampers to kiddies tents. One particularly fun villager turned up with and entire pine dining table and set of chairs set up in the field and a happy wine and sandwich buffet was enjoyed.

The kids loved the face painting by the lovely Natalie from Magic Faces who filled the field with happy painted faces from Spiderman and Vampire to pink flowers and butterflies.

Another favourite things was the bouncy castle where the children were happy to bounce the day away. I must admit I had a cheeky bounce myself


Being a total child myself I brought along my Space Hoppers (yes I am someone who owns spacehoppers) which were enjoyed by adults and children alike. You see a whole new side to some scary CEO's when they're let loose with a space hopper.

For the more artistic there were paper plates to draw on and the kids got quite excited by being able to chalk all over the Village Hall walls.











Plate art
Grafitti chalk wall


The afternoon brought more activity with Luke from Outklass Fitness running a boot camp for the children, ball throwing, star jumping, push ups and races, just watching was thoroughly exhausting but the kids loved it.

Finally the afternoon wound down with a game of rounders organised by Rosie.

All in all a lovely day and hopefully one step on the road to creating a greater community feel in the village. The Big Lunch next year is for the Queen's Jubilee so I'm already wildly excited. I remember the last Jubilee Street Party frenzy which was when I was a kid (gazillions of years ago), street parties are quite fab so will probably try and round up a few people to do one for the kiddies, if you've enjoyed my musings maybe you should organise one too. (I might even give you a lend of the hoppers)