Thursday, May 20, 2010

Gingerbread Cookies


So my friend A happens to be a terrific baker as well as illustrator - while browsing her new blog I saw a recipe for gingerbread cookies that inspired me to pull out my Texas-shaped cookie cutter again. (I only have one cookie cutter, so everything around here is Texas-shaped). I included black pepper since I saw a different recipe that did that and it sounded intriguing, and threw in some ground cloves as well since I had them sitting around. The black pepper added a nice kick to the cookies in occasional bites - I might even try adding more next time.

Gingerbread Cookies

Adapted from Paper Scissors Stone
Makes 36 cookies

Ingredients

350g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground cloves
100g butter
175g light brown sugar
1 large egg
4 tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour mixture – it should resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix well.

2. In a different bowl, beat the egg and syrup together. Pour it over the flour/sugar and mix.

3. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

4. Roll out the dough onto a floured surface so that it is about 3mm thick. Cut out your cookie shapes using a cutter.

5. Bake for 5 minutes and check to see if the cookies are brown. If not, keep checking every minute or so until they are nicely brown all over. Some of my batches took 5 minutes, others took 8, so I just kept checking until they looked right.

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