BLOGMAS, Ginger Bread Men Recipe! 

Hello my lovelies, hope your well! 

Guess what time it is?…. It’s baking time, yay! 

One of my favourite things to do during the Christmas period is decorate gingerbread men, wether your a child, teenager or adult, this will never get old! I just love the fact you can give them your magic touch to make them as creative as you like, if the end result is good enough they might even be instagrammable. 

I will admit, I’ve never actually baked gingerbread men myself until yesterday when I baked and decorated my own gingerbread men. I was a little worried as I’m a perfectionist (the biggest pain ever) when it comes to anything I do so when it comes to baking something for the first time to go on my blog, my anxiety levels hit the roof. Although, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy and simple these were to make, wether your a beginner like myself or a pro at baking, these are so much easier than they look and like I say, the outcome is incredible. I throughly enjoyed baking these. 

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling on otherwise we’ll be here forever. Here’s how I made and decorated my ginger bread men; 

Ingredients For Ginger Bread Men; 

• 12oz / 350g of plain flour plus extra for rolling out
• 1tsp of bicarbonate of soda 
• 2 tsp of ground ginger 
• 1 tsp of cinnamon 
• 4 1/2oz / 125g of butter 
• 6oz / 175g of light soft brown sugar 
• 1 free range egg 
• 4 tbsp of golden syrup 

Instructions To Make Ginger Bread Men

• Firstly, gather all your ingredients and equipment together and preheat oven to 180C / 350 F / Gas Mark 4. 
• Secondly, once you’ve done all of the above sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, the cinnamon and the ginger and pour it into a bowl or a bowl of a food processor. 
• Then add the butter and mix / blend together until it looks like breadcrumbs. 
• Once it looks like breadcrumbs stir in the sugar. 
• Now lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together and pour into the bowl. Then mix / pulse until the mixture clumps together and looks like dough. 
• Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and kneed briefly until nice and smooth. 
• Once smooth wrap the dough into clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for around 15 minutes. 
• Whilst the dough is in the fridge you could line two baking trays with grease proof paper ready for the ginger bread men. 
• After 15 minutes in the fridge roll the dough out again onto a lightly floured surface to around about 0.5cm thick. 
• Using cutters or free hand if you like, cut out the ginger bread men shapes and carefully place onto the lined trays making sure there’s a gap between each one so they have a chance to expand. 
• Once you’ve cut out all your ginger bread men, place the trays into the oven and cook for around 12-15 minutes or until they are a light golden-brown colour. 
• After they’ve cooked, leave on the trays to cool for around 10 minutes before removing them and placing them on a wire rack to finish cooling completely. 

And that’s the ginger bread men made, cooked and cooled, it’s now time to decorate! 

Decorating Ingredients / What You’ll Need; 

• Writing Icing or Royal Icing
• Gel Pens 
• Cupcake Decorationd like; sprinkles, smarties, hundreds and thousands, edible glitter etc

If I’m honest there isn’t really step by step instructions I can give you for decorating gingerbread men. But I’ll give you some ideas which could give you inspiration in some way!

MUST DO; BEFORE DECORATING MAKE SURE THE GINGERBREAD MEN HAVE TOTALLY COOLED DOWN OTHERWISE THE ICING WILL MELT AND RUIN YOUR GINGERBREAD MEN. 

Heres A Couple Of My Ideas; 

• you could make up some royal icing, add some food colouring of your choice and make your gingerbread men look like their wear clothes. This is much harder with the writing icing as I expect you can imagine so Royal icing is what I would highly recommend. 
• You could make them into Christmas characters like Santa, Mrs Santa, Snowmen, ReinDeers, Elfs etc. You could do their features with writing icing and decorate what would be their “clothes” with sprinkles. 
• Do your typical gingerbread man by giving him a bow tie with writing icing and buttons with smarties. 
• You could decorate with all sprinkles etc to make it like a Christmas tree. 
• You could make the gingerbread man look like he’s holding onto something like a candy cane or a Christmas pudding with writing icing. 

My ideas aren’t the greatest but hopefully they help you out in some way. 

I must say, the smell which filled my house was absolutely beautiful, ginger is one of my all time favourite smells when leading up to Christmas as it brings back so many good memories! 

I really hope you enjoyed today’s post and it gives you some inspiration to bake your own.

 
I’d highly recommend baking ginger bread men as it’s such an enjoyable process for anyone of any age, i can imagine it’s amazing to do if you’ve got children especially the decorating. Although mums I will warn you now – it can get a little messy, well very messy actually. 

Sending you all tons of love as always, 

Elle xo

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