The taste of these isn’t exactly anything to write home about, but hey, the look is fun. Though not so fun that it would justify doing this recipe a lot, as the dough handling is a tad convoluted.

So anyway, you make two dough mixes, for the light and the dark.

Light dough:
Sift together 175g plain flour with 1/4 t baking soda, pinch of salt, 1 tsp ground cinnamon and 1 tsp ground ginger.
Rub in 65g unsalted butter, until it resembles crumbs.
Stir in 75g caster sugar, 2 T maple syrup, and one beaten egg yolk.
Bring dough together, knead briefly, then wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins. (The dough, not you.)

Dark dough:
Sift together 175g plain flour, 1/2 t baking soda, pinch salt, 2 t mixed spice, 1 t ground ginger and 25g cocoa.
Rub in 75g unsalted butter, until it resembles crumbs.
Stir in 75g light muscovado sugar, one beaten egg.
Bring dough together, knead briefly, then wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

The assembly involves dividing both doughs in half.

Roll out half of each dough in a rectangle 28x4cm, then slice each of these, long ways, into 7 strips.
Lay the strips side by side, alternating between light and dark.
Roll the other half of the light dough into a sausage shape, 28cm long, then place this in the centre of the stripey rectangle you just created (long-ways – it’s the middle of a tube basically).
Roll up the stripes around the sausage, to make a stripey tube.
Roll out the remaining dark dough into another rectangle 28 x 15cm… ish – the latter figure might need to be bigger. Basically, this is to enclose the tube with a kinda dark sheath.
Tighten up with a bit of rolling, then wrap and chill for another 30 mins. (Insert same gag if required.)

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a few baking sheets.

Slice the dough into discs around 8mm thick.

Bake for 12-15 mins, until starting to colour.

Leave on the tray to firm up for a few mins, then cool on racks.

… and a few hearts (it was close to valentines day)

I thought it was about time that Ivy and I did some proper baking together, and what better to start with than Gingerbread men – or people, to be more PC. I nearly made the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book but that involved leaving the mixture overnight – will try that another time. This is good old Mary Berry, but probably fairly basic.

Ivy had a go at rolling out her very bit of dough and helping with the cutting and adding the eyes. She possibly enjoyed eating bits of the mixture more however and dusting flour all over herself and the floor?

I don’t know how good at biscuits I am, I always end up rolling the dough too thin and I slightly over baked some of them! Oh well, they did taste great in the end, I even love them when they’ve been in the tin a while and are little soft. This recipe made a ton but perhaps that is partly because of the rolling out issue.

150g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsps ground ginger
100g Margarine (I used butter)
175g light muscovado sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 egg beaten
currants to decorate

Preheat oven to 1ª0 degrees. Lightly grease 3 baking trays
Measure flour, bicarb and ginger into a bowl, run on the marg/butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs then stir on the sugar. Add the syrup an d beaten egg then mix to form a smooth dough, kneading lightly with the hands towards the end.

Divide the dough in half and roll out one half to  about 5mm thick. Cut out gingerbread men and ladies and place them on the baking traces, decorate with the currants creating eyes and mouths, buttons etc. Repeat!

Bake in the oven for about 10-12 minutes until slightly darker in colour. Cool slightly on the tray then lift off on to a wire rack.

Good fun to eat too – biting off limbs and heads.

These are actually called Honey and ginger wafers in Dan Lepard’s essential book The Handmade Loaf. Mine, however, weren’t in any way wafer-ish, so let’s just stick with calling them gingerbread biscuits eh?

Very handsome biscuits these ones. As usual, I’m not satisfied with my photos, as none of them show the neat forked pattern on the top.

These biscuits use a pretty comprehensive spice mix, which I simplified marginally due to a lack of a couple of the spices (seriously, even if your spice cupboard is bursting at the seams, but you’ll always find yourself lacking a spice or two when you start to make a recipe. Sod’s law). I just used 1 t coriander seeds, 1 t ground cinnamon, 1/2 t grated nutmeg, 1/4 t black peppercorns, 2 t ground ginger, 2 cardamon pods, all ground up together (with pestle and mortar, or electric grinder).

The dough consists of:
250g runny honey
150g unsalted butter
2 T double cream
200g plain white flour
200g light rye flour
1 t bicarb of soda
100g soft brown sugar
plus the spice mix.

Preheat the oven to 210C.

You melt the butter with the honey, then cool it a little and mix in the cream.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, including the spice mix.

Then blend the wet mix into the dry mix, and mix to a dough. I found it way too wet, so added a little more flour. Mr Lepard’s bread recipes often use very moist doughs, but in the case of these biscuits, it just didn’t seem like it would be possible to roll and cut the dough if it was soggy and sticky.

Rest the dough in the fridge for 2 hours, then roll it out to 5mm and cut 80mm discs. Place them on baking sheets (the recipe says “lined with non-stick baking parchment”, but my sheets are pretty well-seasoned so I just greased them lightly and it was fine).

Make a glaze using 1 egg and 1 egg yolk, whisked with 1/4 t salt. Glaze the biscuits, then mark a grid pattern on each with a fork.

Bake for 10-15 mins until golden brown.

The seem to last very well if stored in a good sealed tin or tupperware.

There’s a theme here.. more gingerbread, by conincidence.
These are lovely and moist and easy as with most muffins. They are lovely warm of course and even with a bit of custard, yum.

250g sf flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of grated nutmeg
150g soft light brown sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
1 tbs black treacle or molasses (I had treacle)
85g butter, cut into small pieces
175ml milk
1 egg lightly beaten

Oven at 190 degrees, grease 10 cups of a 12 cup muffin tin
Mix the flour, bicarb, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar in a large bowl.
Put the golden syrup, treacle, butter and about 1/3 of the milk in a saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted and it’s all blended together then stir in the rest of the milk followed by the egg (let it cool a little before egg goes in – although the milk should cool it down).
Add the dry ingredients, and combine. Spoon into the muffin tin and back for about 20 minutes or until well risen and firm to touch.
Cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out.