Easy Gingerbread

I've never made gingerbread before, but was feeling in the festive mood and had a free day dedicated to Christmas chores so thought I'd give it a shot! My origibal intention was to make some gingerbread men as party of a secret Santa present in work, but ended up making quite a lot!

I followed a BBC Goodfood recipe, however half way getting through the recipe and feeling as though I had made a mistake as it was resembling breadcrumbs, I realised that a lot of the reviews of the recipe were the same - not good! However I managed to save it by adding a bit more golden syrup and a splash of milk.. Here is what I did:

Ingredients

100g soft brown sugar

100g golden syrup

225g plain flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 heaped tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

50g unsalted butter

Splash of milk

Additional tbsp of golden syrup 

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 160C and 2 baking trays with baking paper.
2. Sift together all of the dry ingredients (excluding sugar). Heat butter, sugar and syrup on a low heat until dissovled then leaver to cool. Then mix into dry ingredients when cooled to make a dough. ** At this point is where it started to resemble breadcrumbs for me, if that does occur I added a splash of milk and the additional tbsp of golden syrup. (some people suggested adding another 50g of melted butter instead.)
3. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill at room temperature for around 30 minutes.
4. Cover a surface with flour and be sure to cover rolling pin as well and roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thick and cut into gingernread men. Place on trays allowing space to spread.

1. Cook for 7-10 minutes until your desired bake. I waited until around 7 so they were just golden and still chewy! I was really pleased with these and they taste so good too!

I then decorated with icing! 👍🏻

Original recipe here