On the Fifth day of Christmas, my True Love baked for me….
Glorious filigree snowflake cookies, made of crispy, warmly spiced, melt in your mouth gingerbread.
Those who have met me know that snowflakes are a major obsession. It’s not just because snowflakes are an integral part of skiing, my favourite winter thing, and its not just that they are insanely pretty when they are sifting down out of the sky, and its not just because of how the bent molecular structure of water makes it form hexagonal type crystals when it freezes just right…
It’s all of the above.
Which is why I have a fairly advanced collection of snowflake cookie cutters and every year can’t wait for Christmas to give them a workout! The silver set comes with tiny little cutters to help cut facets into your cookies.
This gingerbread can also be used to make beautiful iced baubles…
…architecturally designed Gingerbread Houses (or in this case, a Church)…
…or, importantly, Ninjabread Men.
Gingerbread (Snowflakes)
ingredients
210g brown sugar
5 tbsp water
3 tbsp treacle
3 tbsp golden syrup
3 tbsp ginger
3 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
250g butter, cold, cubed
1 tsp baking soda
560g flour
mixing
Combine the water, sugar, treacle, golden syrup and spices in a medium saucepan. Heat, stirring until the mixture just starts to boil.
Stir in the butter, using a figure eight motion to incorporate the melted butter into the syrup.
Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl). Stir in the baking soda briefly. Let cool. When the mixture is just warm, add the flour and mix on low speed until a sticky dough forms.
Tip the dough into a large snap lock bag and flatten out, pressing the air out. Seal the bag and refrigerate the dough until very firm.
Working with half the dough at a time, roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is about 3mm thick. Cut large and small snowflake shapes with the cookie cutters and place the shapes, about 1 cm apart, onto trays lined with baking paper. Reform the off cuts and roll out again. Repeat this process.
Using the smaller cookie cutters, or a sharp knife, cut facets away from the large snowflake cookies, leaving a minimum of 2mm of dough between cuts. You can reform the off cuts if desired.
Bake the cookies at 170 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes or until just starting to firm to the touch. Let cool on the trays.
Enjoy!xxx
I should add, that if you really LOVE Gingerbread, you should go make my Gingerbread Cupcakes, from Cupcake a day May!
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