While I’m not religious, my family and I have always celebrated Christmas as a time to be together, share food, and give love and appreciation. Part of the fun is of course within the preparation and cooking stages which gives you plenty of time to bond, giggle and make delicious goodies.
Cutting gingerbread, baked cookies pre-icing, whisking the icing and mixing colours into icing
The plan was originally to make an army of gingerbread men but my man-shaped cookie cutter was missing so I decided to use my set of star biscuit cutters to make a galaxy of colourful gingerbread cookies instead!
This recipe is really simple and the cookies are fragrant with ground ginger; the amount of which can be adjusted to suit your own taste. Plus with a baking time of only 10 minutes, you’ll have your first batch of gingerbread, ready to be decorated in no time!
Let your imagination run wild, get the kids involved, mix different colours of the rainbow or experiment with hundred and thousands, cachous or raisins.
Iced gingerbread stars
Colourful gingerbread stars
Gingerbread Stars
Makes about 12 stars
Gingerbread
125g butter
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg yolk
2½ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarb
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ tablespoons golden syrup
Icing
1½ cups pure icing sugar
1 egg white
4 drops lemon juice
Food colouring
- Cream the butter and sugar
- Add egg yolk and mix in remaining gingerbread ingredients
- Combine and kneed until dough forms. Roll out dough and cut out shapes using cookie cutters or knife. Continue to remove excess dough for re-use
- Bake for 10 minutes in a moderate oven (180C)
- Remove immediately and place on a cooling tray
- Whisk the egg white, then gradually add the icing sugar. Ensure that there are no lumps, then add lemon juice and food colouring
- Decorate as you like
I quadtripled the quantities and as you can see, my dining table was truly a galaxy of gingerbread stars! Yum!
P.S. Merry Christmas! Thank you, my dear readers, for your support and words of inspiration throughout this year. I hope you all enjoy this holiday period both joyfully and healthily! x
A galaxy of gingerbread star cookies
