Gingerbread

For the last few years I have made gingerbread for christmas and people seem to like it well enough so I'm putting it up here. This recipe is fairly quick and easy, and makes about 20 gingerbread men. I'm told that it is very light and fluffy gingerbread... I'm guessing thats a good thing! ;-)

Ingredients:
125g butter
1/3 sugar
1/3 golden syrup
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla


Method:
Step 1: Put the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan and heat gently, stirring occassionally until butter melts. Allow to cool.

Step 2: Sift flour, ginger and cinnamon together.

Step 3: Add sifted bicarbonate of soda to the cooled butter mixture and pour onto flour mixture. Add egg, and vanilla, and mix to a soft dough. Note: I find it easiest to do this with my hands (and its certainly more fun!)

Step 4: Roll out to a thickness of 5mm (1/4 inch) and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter of any design/shape you like (I used christmas-y ones what with it being christmas at the time and all!) and place on non-stick baking paper (on baking trays). This is the part that takes the longest, because you have to keep rolling out the gingerbread and cutting out shapes until there is none left... Having said that, I think it took me less than 10min to do the lot.

If you want, this is when you'd put currants into gingerbread men for eyes and maybe cherries for mouths... I'm too lazy for this though, so mine are just plain gingerbread shapes!


Step5: Bake in a preheated oven at 180degreesCelcius for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.