I can’t remember ever having made Gingerbread Men before, but Mike loves having them once in a while so I thought I’d have a go at making a batch.  I found a great gingerbread men recipe on the bakingmad.com website.

The recipes there cover a really wide range, including all the traditional favourites and some great new ideas. Everything’s really well set out and simple to follow, so whether you’re looking for cake recipes or something savoury for a weekday dinner, you’re sure to find something there.

There are also some great baking tips on the site, so if you’ve ever wondered when it’s really right to open an oven door or how to separate an egg the easy way, that’s a great place to look.

Making the gingerbread men was much simpler than I’d expected. And made even easier by the fact that the whole thing’s done in the food processor.  I think the only thing that needed the slightest physical effort was whisking the egg and golden syrup together.

My mixture was a bit damper than I think it was meant to be, possibly because I was a bit too generous with the golden syrup. I just added a bit of extra flour and it came to what seemed like the right consistency.

I also took a few attempts to get used to my cutters, and I ended up with a few wonky men to start with. I soon got into the swing of it, though, and it gave us a few laughs along the way!

So all in all a great simple recipe and a gorgeous result – they’re really scrummy.

This is how I did it…

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The real recipe calls for a teaspoon of cinnamon, but I skipped that as I’m not all that keen on it (if you want to include it, it goes in along with the ginger).

Ingredients
350g   Plain White Flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 tsp   Bicarbonate Of Soda
2 tsp   Ground Ginger (and a little bit extra for luck!)
125 g   Butter
175g   Billington’s Light Muscovado Sugar (Mike couldn’t find this in our Asda so used his initiative and bought Billington’s Dark Muscovado instead!)
1   Medium Egg
4 tbsp    Silver Spoon Golden Syrup

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/ 350F, Gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into the bowl of a food processor.

Add the butter and whiz until the mix resembles bread crumbs and then stir in the sugar.

Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, then add to the food processor to make a dough.

Leave to chill for 15 minutes (oops – I’ve just realised that I forgot that bit!).

Roll out on a lightly floured surface to ½ cm thick. Cut out with gingerbread cutters and put on a baking tray, leaving a gap between them.

Bake for about 15 minutes. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Did I mention that Mike convinced me to make double the quantities?  He’s a ginger fanatic and wanted to make sure there were plenty. There certainly are – but fortunately they seem to keep nicely in an airtight tub. I think we’ll be making our way through them for weeks!

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