You will need:
One pack white and one pack black royal icing
Ingredients
- 150g soft brown sugar
- 20g caster sugar
- 2 tbsp of golden syrup
- 2 tbsp of honey
- 1.5 tbsp of ground ginger
- ½ tsp of mixed spice
- 1 tsp of vanilla extract
- 200g salted butter, chopped into small pieces
- 450g plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda coloured roll out icing
- white royal icing (and black if you can get hold of that too)
Method
- Put the brown sugar, caster sugar, golden syrup, honey, ginger, mixed spice and vanilla extract into a pan and melt gently, bring to the boil and take off the heat.
- Add the butter and stir until melted, then leave
to cool. - Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda onto the cooled butter mixture and mix well until you have a soft dough.
- Wrap the dough in baking paper and leave to chill and rest in the fridge for a couple of hours or up to a few days.
- Take out of the fridge and leave to rest at room temperature for about half an hour before rolling out and cutting into gingerbread people shapes.
- Lift onto trays lined with non-stick baking paper and put into the fridge to rest again for about an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, once the oven is up to temperature, put in the biscuits and bake for
10-12 minutes (timings will vary according to the size and thickness of the biscuits). - Leave the biscuits on their trays to cool.
- Use a sharp knife to cut little shirt shapes out of coloured roll out icing.
- Mix up a packet of white royal icing with water (follow the instructions on the packet), you need to whisk in an electric mixer until it is in stiff peaks like meringue mixture.
- Mix up a packet of black royal icing, as above. Or colour some of the white icing with black colour paste.
- Put the royal icing into a piping bag. Use royal icing to stick on the little shirts and use your fingers to press to fit. Outline the shirts with royal icing and decorate with faces and little shorts.