We all love Christmas, especially university students as myself, because Christmas times means exam times! (YAY! :( ) I have been so busy lately that I had no time to bake, but.... these cookies are our family's tradition and they need to be done at least 2 weeks before Christmas so that they can get soft by the time we eat them. One day, I was forced to put aside law books and I prepared 4 kilos of gingerbread dough and I had baking day again. What a relax!
Alright, stop crying about exams Teresse, and let's get to the recipe, shall we?
Ingredients for cookies:
2 eggs
250g confectioner's sugar
220g + 280g all purpose flour
ground spices:
cloves
cinnamon
fennel
anise
cardamon
Christmas Gingerbread cookies
By Teresse,
May 8, 2009
Our family's traditional gingerbread cookies recipe - there's no Christmas without these cookies!
Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 250g confectioner's sugar
- 2 tbsp honey
- 50g butter
- 500g all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 egg yolk
- cloves
- cinnamon
- fennel
- anise
- cardamon
- double sifted confectioner's sugar
- 1 egg white
- lemon juice
- pinch of salt
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| Not looking so fancy, huh? No worries, it will turn out great :) |
First, divide you flour in two bowls and add baking soda to the bowl with 220g flour and slightly mix it together. Then prepare double-boiler - keep the water at temperature about 50-60°C and put butter and honey in it. Once they melt, turn off the heat and add confectioner's sugar with spices to the mixture and mix all the ingredients well. Add eggs and mix them in as well and then slowly add the smaller part of flour with baking soda and once again, mix it all well. Once you have done this, you want to prepare the bowl with flour that you haven't incorporated in the dough yet (those 280g) and add the mixture to this. At this point, all you need to do is to work the dough properly so that you are left with compact ball of dough. If the dough is too sticky, add little bit of flour.
Put the dough in a plastic bag and let it sit in a cold place (not fridge!) for couple of hours. Once both you, and the dough, are ready to continue baking, roll the dough until its thickness is about 4mm. And now...cookie cutter time! The best part!! Making fancy reindeers, trees and snowflakes (or paragraphs in my case)! :3
Once you got all your shapes cut, bake them on 200°C until they get pink or brownish, timing varies on thickness of your dough and size of your cookies. Before you take your cookies out of the oven, crack an egg into a mug and whisk it. You will want to coat your cookies with thin layer of this mixture as soon as you put them out of the oven - this makes them nice and shiny.
Icing:
double sifted confectioner's sugar
1 egg white
lemon juice (only few drops)
pinch of salt
The exact amounts of ingredients vary depending on desired thickness of icing - if you want to be fancy as me, you will want more sugar and less liquids to make the icing thick so that you can draw with it, however, if you are lazy, you might want to make the icing thinner so that you can coat your cookies with it by using brush.
The process of icing making is simple - add pinch of salt to egg white, add lemon juice and slowly add confectioner's sugar until your icing reaches desired thickness. If you decide to be fancy as me, I strongly recommend buying icing bag with fine tip as it is really hard to draw precisely with any other tool.
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Aaaaand...eating time. But first, let me take a pic for my instagram!
Just kidding, these cookies have to sit for at least 2 weeks so that they get soft.
Plus we hang them on red ribbons on our Christmas tree, meaning no eating until Christmas is over. :( |
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| I also made some "lawyer" cookies for my mom and my friends. :3 |
Did you make some fancy cookies? Feel free to show me (and let me taste, maybe?). :)
Put the dough in a plastic bag and let it sit in a cold place (not fridge!) for couple of hours. Once both you, and the dough, are ready to continue baking, roll the dough until its thickness is about 4mm. And now...cookie cutter time! The best part!! Making fancy reindeers, trees and snowflakes (or paragraphs in my case)! :3
