German Gingerbread Man

Although it is only beginning of September, but I had to put on the heating yesterday as the UK weather at the moment pretty bad. Anyway, I was longing for something to warm me up, and I wanted to bake something nice to fill the air with warm spices....My choice was obvious: Gingerbread biscuits. I found this recipe on BBC Good Food, although my mum used to make pretty the same back home, so not sure...maybe we use the German recipe as well. The best thing about this gingerbread that it isn't the crunchy, dry version but the soft, chewy, tender one..Hmmm.

German Gingerbread

Ingredients

100g butter

250g honey

120g brown sugar

1.5 tsp cinnamon

1.5 tsp ground cloves or all spice

1.5 tsp ginger powder

1 vanilla pod, seeds

2 eggs

2 tsp cocoa powder

450g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

For the icing-optional 
1egg whites
200-250g icing sugar
food colouring if you want to colour the buttons etc

In a small pot gently heat the butter, sugar and honey and stir regularly until the sugar has completely dissolved. Leave it slightly to cool.

While this happening, mix together all the other ingredients in a big bowl.

Add the liquid mix to the dry ingredients and kneed it together ( you can use your hands or a kitchen aid machine with kneading hook attachment).

Leave the dough to rest for an hour at room temperature for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 180C.  Roll out the dough to about 1cm thickness and cut out gingerbread man or any other shapes you prefer (if the dough is too sticky kneed in a bit more flour)

Place the cookies on a lined tray and bake for approx 10 minutes (they will be slightly soft to the touch, this is what we are aiming for!). 

Once cooled, you can frost them with icing, sugar pearls or any other kinds of decorations....but it is delicious on its own as well.

Just mix the egg whites with the icing sugar, to get a hard but applicable icing mix and fill your piping bag...the rest is up to you:) My piping skills are pretty bad..as you can see, but it is all down to the taste and that is divine!

I left the little gingerbread man army in the kitchen to write the recipe down to the blog, but when I retruned a few minutes later, I saw my husband playing 'Circus' with them:)

Hints and tips: you can play with the colour-I put in two tablespoons of cocoa powder so I get a little browner gingerbread mans, but if you would like a slightly lighter ones, just add the recommended amout