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