Apple Gingerbread

I am now in a full on festive mood. So the second bake I prepared for the winter period is this easy tray bake. Smells lovely, taste delicious and easy to make, so all you can ask for when you have to rush round to do everything before the guests arrive.  This recipe from the 1001 Cupcakes and cookies book.

Apple Gingerbread

 

Ingredients
150 g butter
165 g soft brown sugar
2 tbsp black treacle
225 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
150 ml milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 dessert apples, peeled, chopped and coated with 1 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 160C and line a 23cm square cake tin with baking paper.

Place the butter, sugar and treacle in a saucepan and heat gently until the butter is melted, then leave to cool.

 

Shift the plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda ground ginger and ground cloves into a large bowl. Stir in the milk, egg and cooled buttery liquid. Pour the mixture into the tin and spread the apple pieces equally on the surface and smooth the surface.

 

Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, or until the cake has risen and a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin before turning out and cutting into 12 bars.

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