Gingerbread biscuits

Well hello! It’s been a month or so since I last blogged, and that time has been spent in a state of winter quietude. The days of Christmas busy-ness and upset plans were followed by a household bout of coronavirus (thankfully mild), and given that the outside world has a tendency to noisiness – that’s a pandemic for you – I have been left with the inescapable need to simply be still. The natural world goes into rest and quiet renewal at this time; I follow this urge.

There are a few things to share from Christmas and New Year, such as this garland which used up the last of the summer 2020 harvest of flowers from allotment and hedgerow. I took bunches of strawflower, hydrangea, hops, cornflower, amaranthus and poppy heads, plus a few twigs of haws and hips, and tied them together with string to make a display approximately 4 feet long. It was by no means perfect – I had to stick in several extra bunches once in situ to cover up the string and fill it out – but I absolutely loved it: crafting of this nature is a physical process, created on the floor, on knees, surrounded by the strong scent of hops, the papery textures of dried petals and dangerous pricking thorns. There was something very fitting about having remnants of summer in the house for the darkest days of the year.

Dried flower garland in my living room, made with strawflower, hydrangea, hops, amaranth, cornflower, hawthorn, rosehips and poppy heads.
All tied together with string, which takes trial and error to look good!

The weather turned cold – there’s been a few flurries of snow in these parts and deep hard frosts, which will be good for the fruit trees who need time below 0c.

New Year has been chilly – there was snow on the ground on 2nd January
A hard frost accentuates delicate features on dormant plants, as in this hydrangea

Most pleasingly, the seeds for 2021 are here. I got in slightly earlier than normal with my order, mindful of the increased popularity of gardening amidst the pandemic, and I was right to as many things have already sold out. Is there a joy more content or complete than searching seed catalogues for this year’s collection of flowers and vegetables? In many ways it is better than the growing, for one lives entirely within a place of promise and hope, not yet scarred or deterred by failed harvests and slug damage. This year I plan to try a few new varieties, including kohlrabi, flower sprouts, honeywort and toadflax. I’ll report on these in due course.

This year’s new veg seeds from Seeds of Italy
Plus a few new varieties courtesy of Sarah Raven

On to today’s recipe. Harry and I have been reading The Gingerbread Man with alarming regularity (why are kids’ books so dark??) leading to a few baking sessions where we create – you’ve guessed it – gingerbread men. Or I should say gingerbread people, for our cutters are more of an amorphous human-shaped blob rather than gender-specific. We also have a cutter shaped like a moose, which is a personal favourite.

Cutting out gingerbread men (or moose) is child’s play

This is the best recipe for gingerbread that I have ever come across, cut out years (and I mean YEARS) ago from a magazine. No matter what a pre-schooler can throw at it, and how many times it is re-rolled, it refuses to get tough. The dough, when first made, is incredibly wet so it does need a few hours in the fridge to firm up before rolling out. You can of course adjust the amount of ginger depending on how spicy you want your biscuits, and there is the option to make them pretty with icing, but we prefer the slapped on approach. Gingerbread softens in the tin, so if you want to retain a bit of ‘bite’ to your biscuit then I’d err on the side of over-baking, not to the point of burnt, obviously, but certainly browned around the edges.

Harry can eat three of these in one sitting.

There is the option to decorate beautifully – or just slather your biscuits with water icing, melted chocolate and sprinkles

Gingerbread biscuits

125g unsalted butter
100g soft brown sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
325g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1-2 teaspoons ground ginger (use more or less according to your taste)
To decorate: water icing, melted chocolate and sprinkles

Melt together the butter, sugar and syrup, then leave to cool slightly. Mix together the dry ingredients, add the butter mixture, then stir to combine. You will create a very soft dough. Tip onto clingfilm, wrap it firmly then place in the fridge for an hour or two to firm up.

Pre-heat the oven to 170c. Line several baking trays with parchment.

Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, to the thickness of about 1.5cm. Cut out your biscuits and place them on the baking trays – they do spread so keep them several centimetres apart. You’ll probably need to bake in batches.

Bake until golden around the edges. The time depends on the size of your biscuits but my gingerbread men take about 10 minutes, and the large moose biscuits take about 12. Leave to harden on the trays for five minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Decorate with water icing, melted chocolate and sprinkles, if liked. These store for several days in a tin.

Also this week (month):
Harvesting: Mustard red frills, baby chard and rocket from the veg trug. First daffodils are in the supermarkets – I marvel at their cheapness, it somehow seems not right to be able to buy 8 stems for £1.
Eating and cooking: Did very well with the turkey leftovers this year: there was turkey hash, loads of sandwiches, 4 freezer boxes of soup, 2 pies, 3 boxes of chilli and 4 boxes of stock. Also made Jamie Oliver’s Jerk ham which was delicious, though my method needs improving as it does tend to dryness. Buying boxes of clementines and looking for the first seville oranges.
Reading: The book you wish your parents had read by Philippa Perry, who I like very much as a human being, but I think that’s enough psychotherapy for now, thank you very much. Also the new British baking book by Regula Ysewijn, which I will talk about at a later date, and a book about Qi Gong.

2 thoughts on “Gingerbread biscuits

  1. Thanks for another lovely blog – a treat – which I forward to several people.

    There are Seville oranges in Waitrose and Morrisons. Haven’t looked in our greengrocers yet.

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