21 December 2009

Gingerbread Galore!

The lovely bloggers Helen from Grab Your Fork and Suze from chocolatesuze recently organised a massive Xmas party for Sydney food bloggers. Everyone brought along a dish to share and needless to say with around 50 food bloggers in attendance, we ended up with huge amounts of food. Check out these posts for more foodie madness!


Amongst a tiered platter of classic kids favourites, "Elvis" cupcakes, a slow cooked Bo Ssam, chicken wings, a Makoto sushi platter and other delicious offerings, I made some iced gingerbread cookies for the occasion (recipe below).


A few days later I also decided to try out raspberri cupcakes' mini gingerbread houses. These turned out great and now there is a cute little gingerbread house sitting on my dining table awaiting it's destruction on Christmas Day! 




I didn't make all four houses in the recipe so I had some dough leftover for some gingerbread Christmas trees and gingerbread men to decorate the garden around my house. The house was very sturdy and the measurements for the house were perfect! Thanks Steph :)



It's not quite finished yet - on the day I intend on sprinkling some sifted icing sugar for some snow and also putting a puff of smoke from the chimney using mini marshmallows and an unravelled paperclip, as shown in the raspberri cupcakes recipe. More photos will be posted up of the finished product later.


Gingerbread Cookies

2 cups flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
90g butter
1/3 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar

1. Sift flour, soda and ginger into a bowl. Place butter, sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan and cook over low heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Cool.

2. Pour the syrup into the flour mixture and combine. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.


3. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to desired thickness (I rolled mine out to about 4-5mm). The dough might start to crack while you are rolling it but keep rolling and it should come back together. Cut out shapes and carefully place onto trays.


4. Bake in oven for 6-8 minutes (the longer you bake them the crunchier they will be). Cool biscuits on trays for 5 minutes because they will still be soft, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.


Royal Icing
1 egg white
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Beat egg white until frothy then gradually beat in icing sugar 1/2 cup at a time until the mixture is combined. Add food colouring if desired then place icing into piping bag with a round tip and pipe onto cookies.

11 comments:

  1. For the carpet-bombing of the house I recommend using pitch fired from an array of seven trebuchets and ignited with fire-arrows from afar. Don't ignite the pitch before launch because burning your face with pitch is not fun. Hence why you give it to the house.

    Unless you're thinking of demolishing this lovely piece of work in some other way...

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  2. Thanks again for the sample of trees and men. They were lovely still after a day.

    Seeing as it's a mini-house, does The Ninja encourage the use of mini-artillery for demolishing?

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  3. Yay thank you for the shout out-this totally made my night! I know I said it already but your gingerbread house is SO CUTE! I'm so happy you tried out the recipe and the measurements worked out :D And I'm glad you're going to eat it, because I didn't have the heart to eat mine and it was such a waste! Your gingerbread cookies were super yum, I was munching on them after the picnic even though I was meant to be full from all the picnic food already!

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  4. Oohh I stand corrected. There is one gingerbread smiley hee hee and good work with the house! Mmm maybe I should give these a go... I feel like gingerbreaddd

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  5. Wow, great work on the gingerbread and the houses are so cute! :D

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  6. gingerbread men remind me so much of my childhood. love you designs :-)

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  7. Hi The Ninja - rofl your way of demolishing the house sounds much more exciting!

    Hi mademoiselle délicieuse - hehe no problem! I'm glad you liked them :)

    Hi Stephcookie - Aw your comment totally made my day! Did you just chuck your beautiful house out then? :O

    Hi FFichiban - haha yes Mr Tree. I didn't bring him along to the picnic though!

    Hi Lorraine - Thanks so much :)

    Hi Simon Food Favourites - Thanks! I actually didn't eat much gingerbread during my childhood, only the big soft gingerbread men from the canteen with the smarties buttons occasionally.

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  8. Nice work with the gingerbread. Quite enjoyed the ones I had at the picnic :)

    The little gingerbread house looks so cute. If it weren't for the photos, it would almost be a shame to break it down.

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  9. Hi Simon - Thanks! I'll be sure to take lots of photos of the gingerbread house before I eat it :)

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  10. Argh - there was so much food I didn't get around to trying your gingerbread :(! But like everyone else going around, will be participating in Gingerbread house making this year too - but the cheats way - from a pre-made kit! hehe.. Merry Christmas anyway & hope it's a great one!

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  11. Hi Forager - Merry Christmas to you too! Hoping to see photos of your gingerbread house, even if it's from a kit I'm sure it's amazing!

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