Gingerbread Men

Easy festive biscuits with ginger, spices and golden syrup. Can be made in any shape and decorated as you wish. Great for Christmas!

Course Dessert

Cuisine British

Keyword biscuits

Prep Time 45

Cook Time 13

Chill time 30

Total Time 1 28

Servings

Calories 212kcal

Author thebakingexplorer

Ingredients

For the gingerbread biscuits

300 g Plain flour plus more for dusting
½ tsp Bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp Ground ginger
2 tsp Mixed spice see notes
100 g Light brown soft sugar
50 g Dark brown soft sugar
¼ tsp Salt
100 g Butter cold, cut into cubes
1 Egg large
100 g Golden syrup

For the homemade royal icing (optional, or use shop bought)

1 Egg white
150 g Icing sugar sieved
⅛ tsp Cream of tartar

For decoration

Sweets, chocolate candies etc.

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Put the plain flour, light brown soft sugar, dark brown soft sugar, ground ginger, mixed spice, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a mixing bowl and stir together. Or you can put them straight into your food processor and pulse it a few times to combine the ingredients
Put the flour mixture into a food processor and add the butter, pulse the mixture a few times until the butter is mixed in and the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. If you are making the dough by hand, add the butter to the flour mixture and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. You can also use a pastry blender or a fork
Add the egg and golden syrup and mix until combined, you should be able to squeeze a handful of the mixture in your hand and it sticks together to form a dough. Use your hands to push all the mixture together into a big lump of dough. Wrap it in clingfilm and chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes
Pre-heat your oven to 160C Fan/350F/Gas Mark 4, and line a few baking trays with baking paper
Roll out the dough onto a floured surface to a thickness of 3-5mm. Cut out the gingerbread man shapes (or any shapes you prefer). The cutter I used was 11.5cm tall and 9cm wide. Place the cut out shapes onto the lined baking trays. Keep re-rolling the dough until it is all used up
Bake the gingerbread biscuits for 12-13 minutes. If you can't bake them all straight away, put the dough or the cut out shapes in the fridge and bake in batches. Leave to cool on the trays for 10 minutes, then move to a cooling rack to cool fully
If you want to make your own royal icing, put the ingredients into the bowl of your stand mixer and mix using the whisk attachment on a medium-high speed (I used speed 6) for 7-10 minutes until the mixture has thickened. Tip it into a piping bag and snip a little bit off the end. Pipe onto the biscuits to decorate, and add any sweets or sprinkles of your choice
Store the leftovers in an airtight container in a cool place, the gingerbread will last around 1 week

Video

Notes

For this recipe your butter should be cold. I also recommend using proper block butter rather than a baking spread.
I recommend using both dark brown and light brown sugar for both their colour and lovely caramelised flavour, but if you can't get hold of them, caster sugar will work too. Your gingerbread will be lighter in colour if you use caster sugar instead.
Mixed spice is a British spice blend containing cinnamon, coriander seed, nutmeg, clove, pimento, and ground ginger. If you can't get hold of it where you're based, you can use a Pumpkin Spice mix instead or add a mix of other spices - I recommend cinnamon and nutmeg.
Golden syrup is sold all over the world, so check the international section in your supermarket if you're not based in the UK. You can also buy it online from Amazon (see link below). If you can't get hold of it, light corn syrup or glucose syrup are the closest things to it, however I've not tested this recipe with them. Please note, you will not get the same results if you omit the golden syrup. I also don't recommend replacing it with black treacle (molasses).
Although I provide cup measurements, I highly recommend weighing your ingredients out using digital kitchen scales*. It is the most accurate way to measure ingredients and will ensure the best results. Digital scales are very low cost and can be purchased for around £12 ($16.50) .
For teaspoon (tsp) and tablespoon (tbsp) measurements, please use measuring spoons* and not the type of spoons you eat with. Again this will ensure accuracy and provide the best results.

Nutrition