Christmas Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

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Spiced, sweet, and full of festive nostalgia, gingerbread cookies are a timeless holiday favourite. They fill the kitchen with the scent of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

Medieval Europeans valued ginger as a luxury and a preservative. Someone shaped these charming cookies into hearts, stars, and little people. People made them to celebrate special occasions and winter festivities.

Ancient Greece and Egypt made the earliest ancestors of gingerbread: spiced honey cakes. Later, people often credit medieval European monks as some of the first to refine this version. By the 11th to 13th centuries, Crusaders and traders brought ginger from the Middle East and Asia to Europe. There, people mixed it with honey and breadcrumbs or flour to make early gingerbread recipes.

Ingredients

• 180g unsalted butter, chopped and softened
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup golden syrup (or honey)
• 1 egg
• 3 and a 1/3 cups of plain flour
• 1 and a 1/2 tbs ground ginger
• 1 and 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
• 2 tbs milk
• Icing to pipe is optional

Method

1. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and syrup in a large bowl until pale and creamy. Add egg and beat to combine. Sift flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda over butter mixture, then add milk. Stir to combine.
2. Turn dough out onto a clean surface lightly dusted with extra flour. Knead until smooth. Divide dough into 3 portions, then shape each into a disc. Wrap in baking paper, then chill for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Line 3 large baking trays with baking paper. Roll each dough portion between 2 sheets of baking paper until 5mm thick.
4. Using a 9cm gingerbread man cookie cutter, cut 12 men from dough, re-rolling scraps if needed. Place on prepared trays. Bake, in batches, for 8 minutes or until light golden. Stand on trays for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
5. Bake for 20 minutes
6. Optional piping for decorating

A member of the team added: “I like to punch a little whole into the top of the cookie before baking in the oven. Once done, you can place some ribbon through and use as a table napkin decoration at Christmas time”.

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Recipe credit: Leearne Groves

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