“Run, Run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I am a gingerbread man!”
That is what comes to my mind when I think gingerbread cookies! A quote from the gingerbread man story we all read in childhood. Funny how some stories stay with us! Even funnier how these little cookies provoke lines of the same story to my children as well! My daughter had been reading this book at school, and she came to me saying: “we have to start baking ginger!” Not knowing she meant the cookies, I asked her, why ginger? She said: “because Santa is on his way, and ginger man is very fast, we can’t catch him!“
Bless their little hearts, these little ones are just so sweet!
Gingerbread cookies are bundles of sweet and snappy spice and aroma. So much so that when making them, your house will smell like a Christmas Bouquet Garni! Your appetite will be on as soon as you start gathering your ingredients. And once baked, you can hardly wait till they cool down, and everyone will start munching. The next thing you know, they are gone! I guess that’s how they are so fast!
Making gingerbread cookies is a very good place to get the children to help in the kitchen. They love the whole mixing, and kneading, then they rave at rolling and cutting out the shapes. This is an activity that you can do together as a family, in the festive spirit. After all, the festive season is all about family, about gathering together and celebrating together. Making gingerbread cookies with the little ones is a very good place to start. When the kids help you make these cookies, you are also giving them a chance to be proud of themselves and feel important. As they will want to show the world what they have done, and will want to make sure that their favourite auntie knows its them who made the cookies. It is important to provide children with a chance to be proud, to feel a sense of achievement and this is one. As you are baking, you can recite quotes from the gingerbread man story, you can even read the story for them as the cookies are baking, and ask them if they think your gingerbread cookies are going to run away as soon as you open the oven door. Make it exciting and involve them in every step, and you have got yourself some very happy children!
Gingerbread cookies do not have to be cut only in the shape of men and women. You can go for any festive shape you like. You can even go for making edible tree ornaments out of these cookies just as demonstrated in the video above. Once baked, decorated and tied with a ribbon, your children will love nothing more than hanging them on the tree. This also gives you a chance to change your tree decoration and theme every year, as there is no limit to the designs and colour schemes that you can come up with. Edible ornaments are so fashionable at the moment, and they never fail to delight.
These ornaments, can be packed in a plastic bag, tied with a ribbon if you want to keep them in best shape for the kids to pick and have on Christmas day as they collect their gifts from under the tree. You can even place them in cute little see through bags and offer them as party favours for the kids joining your Christmas eve dinner. Or can put them in cookie exchange baskets, for the recipient to hang them on their tree.
To create tree ornaments, all you need to do is make sure there is an opening in the cookie dough to insert a ribbon in order to hang on the tree. If you are cutting a shape that does not have an opening, just create one using a piping tip or a straw.
The recipe on this link is perfect for cutouts and had been modified to handle decoration, should you want to decorate them. Not all cookies can be decorated as some will become too wet from the decoration that they lose the snap and can end up crumbling and breaking, especially if you go for full decoration not just icing lines. The use of treacle and spices make for a darker coloured gingerbread cookie, but a delicious one, nonetheless. This is my favourite gingerbread cookie recipe, and am hoping it will become yours as well. I have repeatedly used this recipe for making my gourmet Christmas cookies and themed Christmas cookie orders. They never failed and I always received rave reviews.
Give these a try this festive season and watch them disappear 🙂
Here are some Festive Cookie Inspirations (gingerbread and sugar cookies)…
Relative Links
- Sugar Cookies
- Gingerbread Cookies
- Cardamom Sugar Cookies
- How to make Royal Icing
- Royal Icing FAQ
- Christmas Cookie Exchange
- Homemade Vanilla Essence
- Homemade Vegan Food Colouring
Happy Holidays
With these decorating skills you were sadly missed at our gingerbread party! It made me laugh to see how much you made too – piles and piles of gingerbread. Your recipe is quite different from mine but I agree, I've never met anyone, adult or child who didn't like gingerbread.
Dima! I love your gingerbread cookies! The kids will be doing their own on Wednesday….I´ll show them yours as inspiration 😉
Sally, Yes I have sadly missed the artistic get together, can see from the pics that you all went all the way 🙂 loved them.
A few years ago when I was catering, aside from the parties and events, I also did themed cakes and cookies 🙂 At times like this I would be baking it through the holidays, buried under batches and batches of cookies lol so yes done my share of baking, but somehow still love it!!
Marta, thanks for loving my cookies 🙂 and hope they inspire the kids xx
Dima loved ur gingerbread cookies, but i wanna ask u what is golden syrup??
Thank you for loving my gingerbread cookies, and for the comment 🙂
Golden Syrup is a thick golden coloured form of invert sugar syrup (sugar treated with acid to separate the fructose and the glucose). It is made by refining sugar cane juice into sugar, resulting in what is known as golden syrup.
Golden syrup can be substituted with honey if not available at your markets. It is also used instead of honey for those who are intolerant to honey. Golden syrup kind of like a light coloured treacle, it lends a caramel flavour and is used widely in desserts and bakes.
Hope this helps 🙂
My children love the story and always want to have this but I never tried baking it.I'm gonna bake some as soon as I could gather the ingredients.thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the comment. Yes do try it, you are gonna love it 🙂 best thing is its egg-free which means they get to try the dough even before it's baked, children love that 😉
let me know how it goes
YOUR COOKIES LOOKED REALLY GREAT BUT I HAVE A QUESTION GOLDEN SYRUP IS IT LIKE CORN SYRUP AND PLEASE HT IS THE BLACK TREACLE THANK U…
SORRY WHT IS THE BLACK TEACLE THANKSSS
Rania,
Thank you for the comment and glad you like the cookies 🙂
Golden Syrup is more like honey, except it is made out of sugar not honey, the sugar is treated and somewhat caramelised lending a caramel flavour. It is thick sugar syrup the colour of honey. When not found, you can use honey instead. Corn syrup on the other hand is very light coloured and less thick than golden syrup. They are both a kind of treated sugar syrup and have some similar properties. But the flavours are different
As for black treacle, it is like a molases also made out of sugar caramelised a bit further and is dark coloured like molases. Treacle has a distinct flavour. the container will say treacle or black treacle. if not found you can substitute with dark molases.
i made the cookies and house last Christmas i'll send u photos… luv ur artistic work Dima <3
Thank you Rawan :)) I like to do decoration too. Don't like to eat so much sugar, but for looks and fun like to do it. Yes send me photo let me see :))