Christmas Baking: Gingerbread

Hi all,
as I mentioned before I have quite a few recipes to catch up and add to here, so I thought I'd better start with all the baking I did over Christmas.

I found this recipe via Pinterest, which if you haven't heard of it is a highly addictive virtual pin board where you can organise all the things you like that you find on the internet. It's great for finding other recipes amongst other things and the images link back to the original source, which in this case is here: www.manggy.blogspot.com

[NB. Having just finished writing my account of this recipe, mine looks considerably longer than the original, but then it is interspersed with comments on how I had to do things differently due to lack of necessary equipment etc. It might seem a bit of a effort, but it is totally worth it, as the end result is so satisfying, and better than any Gingerbread I've had in a long time.]

I won't lie, I made so much gingerbread over the holidays that I'll quite happily leave it until next Christmas before I make any again, but the recipe did indeed deliver absolutely yummy, thick and chewy gingerbread biscuits or cookies, or whatever you want to call them really. They are actually too chewy and thick to be biscuits, which are normally crunchier, and not really cookies either in my mind (not in the British sense anyway), but either way they are really, really moreish! So thank you Mark from manggy.blogspot :)

As with all my food posts, here's what I used and what I did (if I can remember that far back...)

Ingredients

425g plain flour
150g soft dark brown sugar (Billington's is great for this)
3/4 tsp baking powder (original recipe used baking soda but I wasn't sure of the difference until now!)
1/2 tsp table salt
1 tbsp ground cinnamon (makes the kitchen smell divine!)
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves (had the bonus effect of clearing up a slightly stuffy nose - winner!)
165g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes (original recipe said cut into 12 pieces but I just cut them as small as I could to make sure they softened enough, but equally you don't want them melted!)
225g Tate & Lyle black treacle (original recipe specified molasses, but if you're interested in what the difference is, click here)
2 tbsp semi-skimmed milk (original recipe asked for full fat, but I never have it in the house and semi-skimmed seemed to work fine)

I chose not to ice my gingerbread as I didn't have the time or the patience (plus, from previous misadventures with icing I don't trust myself not to ruin the baking with shoddy icing), but if you'd like to try it the original recipe will show you how.

Method

I made this by hand, but again the original recipe very helpfully gives you alternative instructions for using a mixer with a paddle attachment, or a food processor. Bear in mind that doing this by hand is quite time consuming and requires a fair amount of effort so don't attempt this method if you're in a hurry or get fed up quickly!

1. In a small bowl, add the treacle and milk and carefully stir together until the treacle starts to lighten slightly in colour and thin out until it moves a bit more freely. Once it's all combined, set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Add the brown sugar and whisk through to combine all the ingredients.

3. Scatter the butter cubes on top of the flour mixture and (*elbow grease alert*) gradually work into the flour in whatever way you can! The aim is for it to 'resemble a very fine meal' (manggy.blogspot.com). Mark suggested using either a pastry blender, a fork, two knives, or a rubber spatula (my weapon of choice). I might possibly invest in a pastry blender (or even a food processor) for next Christmas as this did take quite a while for it to be completely combined, and the second time I attempted this for the larger batches, I ended up varying my technique to also use forks and my hands just to make sure it was properly combined. But if you're using your hands you have to be careful that your body heat doesn't warm the mixture too much or the butter melts and won't distribute evenly, so you might need to stop and wash your hands in cold water a few times during the process.

4. Once that was done (finally!) I followed Mark's instructions and added about a third of the treacle/milk mixture to the dry ingredients and combined them with a rubber spatula to moisten the dough. Once that's all combined as best as you can, add another third of the milky treacle (half of what's left in your bowl) and combine again, and then repeat with the remainder of the milky treacle. You should end up with a nice soft dough with a rich brown colour. At this point, I feel I should probably mention that this is definitely one of those recipes that really does require you to wear an apron (and not one that you will be upset about if it stains) as preparing this this recipe by hand is really messy work. The kitchen will smell quite strongly of the rich treacle but I personally wouldn't recommend eating the gingerbread dough as it doesn't taste all that nice just yet!

5. Once it's all mixed together put aside while you prepare your baking trays.

6. Preheat your oven to just under 180 degrees c.

7. Cut out 6 rectangles of greaseproof paper the same dimensions as your baking trays. Unfortunately mine are not quite the right size for the large batch baking I had undertaken, but I had to make do with what I had.

8. Take your dough and divide it in two. The original recipe used scales to do this accurately but as one of my baking trays was smaller than the other I had to adapt the size of the dough balls accordingly.

9. Place each dough ball on a rectangle of greaseproof paper and shape into a rough cuboid shape (a bit like a meatloaf) and then cover with another rectangle of paper. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough between the greaseproof paper until it's about 1/4 inch thick. In my later batches I experimented with rolling it out a bit thicker and it still turned out really nicely but obviously you have to adapt the baking times accordingly.

10. Place your 2 sandwiched dough sheets on a tray and pop in the freezer for about 20 minutes or until firm. If you're making for later on you can also put them in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight.

11. Use the remaining greaseproof paper rectangles to line the baking trays that will go in the oven and set aside.

12. Adjust the racks in your oven so there are two around the middle (you'll be swapping the trays over in the middle of the baking - my oven is hotter on the right side as well so I have to rotate both ways!).

13. Take a dough sandwich from the fridge/freezer and carefully peel off the top layer of greaseproof paper, and then lay it gently back on top of the dough. Put another baking tray on top of the loosened greaseproof paper, and then flip it so the tray is underneath. Carefully peel off the other rectangle of greaseproof paper and throw away. Repeat with the other dough sandwich.

14. I then used my Christmas-themed cookie cutters to cut out various shapes (bells, holly, snowmen, stars - the latter turned out to be a bit more tricky to get out of the cutters without misshaping them slightly - and just for fun, music notes, hearts, and flowers in subsequent batches), which I then placed on the lined baking trays leaving about 3/4 inch gap between each piece of gingerbread. Here's what they looked like before baking (you can see how the stars are a bit wobbly-looking).

15. Bake in the oven for about 8 minutes, swapping over the trays to the other racks and also turning if you're oven is like mine! Because my stars were quite a bit littler than the other shapes they cooked a lot quicker so I had to take them out before the other shapes to stop them being overcooked. In future I think the thing to do is do a batch of stars separately as it can be a bit a pain having to keep going back and forth to the oven constantly.

16. To tell when they've had long enough in the oven the original recipe gave a great tip which is to touch them ever so gently with your fingertip, and if they don't leave an imprint then they can come out, if they do leave an imprint, just pop them back in for another minute or so. They will set a bit more as they cool though, so don't worry about them being undercooked, it is better that they are not overcooked, as otherwise they end up a bit crunchy rather than chewy (as some of my stars did on the first attempt).

17. Leave the gingerbread to cool on the trays for a couple of mins and then move to a cooling rack using a metal spatula. I just covered my cold grilling rack with greaseproof paper and used that as a cooling rack - I only moved house 7 months ago and still don't have quite all the culinary equipment I'd like. It's not quite ideal but it did the eventually did the job. For the second attempt where I was making a lot more, I cleared a shelf from my fridge and used that over my sink area as a cooling rack.

18. With the left over scraps of dough, bring together and re-shape on more greaseproof paper rectangles, roll out, then chill and cut into shapes again. Your first batch of gingerbread will be done by now so you can re-use the baking trays, but you probably need more greaseproof paper to line them.

Here's what they looked like after they were done baking.

19. Instead of icing them with royal icing, I just dusted the ones I was giving to family and friends with icing sugar which looked nice and simple and didn't require any particular dexterity. It also meant that the decoration wouldn't get damaged en route to various people's houses over the Christmas period, so it worked out as the most practical option for me anyway!





I'm afraid I neglected to take any photos of the final dusted products, but I promise they did look and taste delicious. In fact, despite smelling quite rich, they were surprisingly moreish to be the point where the first batch I attempted was completely devoured by myself, Tom, and two friends in record time. I did however keep one piece behind which I put in a ziplock bag and hid (from Tom) to see how long it would last. After about a week it was a bit harder, but still totally yummy.

So if I can get my hands on some more advanced equipment by next Christmas then I shall definitely be making these again.

Coming next: Christmas Shortbread.

Lettie xx